Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/140

 minimum of rent Toeing 4,000 sheep) have a right to dictate what manner of labour shall be supplied for the money. The sort of labourers who suit the employers of labour are not often those who would contribute most to the intelligence and education of a colony. For a long series of years the Australian flockowners' beau-ideal of an emigrant was an able-bodied single man from an agricultural county — humble, ignorant, and strong.

The South Australian commissioners exhibited one halfpennyworth of sense, amid gallons of nonsense and jobbery, by introducing the system of pairs of both sexes. This was the one good feature in their system.

The Australian squatters, and all persons more or less in communication with, and able to influence, the home government, like our own agricultural and the American manufacturing interest, held two very strong opinions first, that their pursuit was the only calling of any consequence to the State; and, secondly, that it could not be protected too much. They always wanted labour, and it could not be too cheap.

We find them constantly desiring to bring down wages to a level which, if reached, would have very soon put a stop to all emigration, for it would have been lower than in England, and that was not worth crossing the sea to earn. We find them constantly desiring to dictate what class of labourers they would have, and that class specially in reference to sheep. We find them depreciating, not untruthfully perhaps, but untruly, the character of the Australian soil and of the Australian agricultural settlers. To them the Alpha and Omega of the Australian colonies was breed sheep, to grow wool and tallow.

Even when claiming a return to a low price of land, many desired to keep up the size of lots, so as to exclude small farmers from freehold.

The result we now see. For fifteen years the agents of the colony and the emigration commissioners have been recruiting and sending out emigrant recruits. Their most successful operations have been conducted in times of distress in the home labour market. The fund in the early period of the system down to 1839, when all the colonists were madly engaged in nodding at the government continental land sales, was sufficient to pay the passages out of fifty thousand emigrants. For a time the market was apparently glutted, but the increase of stock, and the judicious measures introduced by Caroline Chisholm, soon absorbed them. Soon arose an increased demand for labour. The land fund was dried up; sales at 1 an acre were few and far between, except in the copper-mining colony of South Australia; but by degrees he rents from pastoral occupations of crown lands became so large that security was found for an emigration debt, to which was added, from