Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/88

 "3rdly, From the production, at a more distant time, of wine, olive oil, hemp, flax, silk, opium, &c., as articles of export to Great Britain.

"4thly, From a progressive advance in the value of land, as it becomes improved; and by an increased population."

The grant of land was made on the ground that the colony would derive advantage from the importation of so large a capital, invested in cattle, horses, and sheep of the Cheviot breeds; in the cultivation of the produce of southern Europe; and that the mother country would be saved the cost of maintaining a certain number of convicts.

At that period it was still so much an object with the government to relieve itself of the cost of the maintenance of criminals, that it was agreed that the company should be relieved of quit rent, on condition of their employing a certain number of prisoners. But from the period of the grant to the Australian Agricultural Company, the value of convict labour rose so rapidly, that they never were able to obtain the stipulated number of servants. In 1830 we find the editor of the Sydney Monitor proposing that convicts should be sold on arrival to the highest bidder, and anticipating that they would realise, in lots of two hundred, 100 a year each for five or ten years!

In the course of the correspondence with this company, the Secretary of State for the Colonies announced that in future, "instead of giving grants of land free, lands were to be put up to sale, according to a valuation of the surveyor-general, similar, in many respects, to the system adopted in the United States of America."

This plan had been suggested by Mr. Commissioner Bigge, with a price of 10s. an acre for lands near towns, and 5s. an acre in the country.

Unfortunately the example of the Australian Company infected many members of Parliament and other persons of influence, who hastened to obtain grants which cost the minister nothing, and appeared to the granters of immense value—a delusion on both sides. The precedent became most embarrassing to the government, while many of the huge blocks were of very little money value to the absentees, and of great disadvantage to the colony.

As to the Australian Agricultural Company, their proceedings created, in the then state of the colony, a financial revolution. They sent out from England, according to the custom of joint stock companies, a numerous staff of officers, with cargoes of implements and breeding stock on a most costly scale; and purchased ewes and heifers in the colony so largely, that prices were raised nearly two hundred per cent. "The company with a long pocket" was a popular toast at