Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/89

 colonial dinners, and sellers were never wanting as long as they had any money to invest.

A reaction followed, as it always does follow, extravagant expectations of pecuniary profit. Nevertheless the colony derived advantage from the introduction of the company's capital and superior stock in sheep, horses, and cattle. The grand ideas of vineyards, olive oil, opium, silkworm cultivation, and orange groves, which formed applauded passages in speeches in the House of Commons and the court-room of the company, were never extended beyond the resident manager's gardens.

Unfortunately the beneficial influences were neutralised by a further grant, which not only handed over the large tract of coal seams which had been unprofitably worked by the government, but actually created a monopoly which precluded the colonists from working, on any terms, any coal which might happen to be found under their estates.

These doings seem monstrous now. At that period they were ordinary transactions, in which honourable men and liberal politicians took a share without shame. In the same perverse spirit the authorities and merchants at Sydney, up to 1826, compelled every ship to enter and break bulk at Sydney before calling at the ports of Van Diemen's Land. In 1825 monopoly was as much an article of faith with statesmen as free trade in 1852.

Under Governor Darling emigration from England of persons of moderate capital increased. But a vicious system was established in the surveyor's office, for the benefit of favoured or feeing parties, by which surveys of waste land were kept secret from the uninitiated. In 1830 the author of "A Letter of Advice to Emigrants" recommends " every settler to bring out an order from the Secretary of State to be allowed to inspect charts and maps in the surveyor's office;" and adds, " from being* denied such inspection, emigrants wander about the interior of the colony at great expense, but to little purpose." Reform makes slow progress in the Colonial Office. If we are to believe the boasts of an Hibernian-German captain who, in 1848, visited Port Phillip, even in that year there existed secret choice reserves near the town of Melbourne, which, by the "open sesame" of his letter from Earl Grey, after being long retained, were handed over to a German colony.

Darling ruled the convicts with a rod of iron. The times of the "first fleeters," with floggers, and short allowances of food, were revived. A penal settlement was formed at Moreton Bay; and there, it is commonly affirmed, the prisoners were so badly treated that they committed murder in order to be sent for trial to Sydney. County magistrates