Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/95

 First in importance among the legislative changes effected by Sir Richard Bourke's government, must be ranked the "Order in Council," subsequently embodied in an act of parliament, by which sales by auction, at a minimum upset price of 5s. per acre, superseded free grants of land; and the act of the Colonial Legislative Council, by which pastoral occupations of the vast territories beyond the surveyed limits of the colony (colonially, the Bush) were legalised, placed under the control of special commissioners, and charged with a rent in the shape of a licence-fee and a poll-tax.

From these two sources (the sale of land and pastoral or squatting rents) a fund has been derived, which, during the last twenty years, has conveyed to Australia more than one hundred thousand free emigrants, selected from the poorest labourers of the United Kingdom. The introduction of these labouring emigrants rendered the abolition, first of the assignment system, and finally of transportation, possible.

Here it may be convenient to review the various "land-laws" which had prevailed in the colony up to the time when those changes were introduced, which occupied so important a place in colonial discussions during the government of Sir Richard Bourke and his successor.

From the foundation of the colony in 1788 to 1824, regulations for the disposal of land were left entirely in the hands of the governor. From time to time the home Government exercised the right of bestowing grants upon such persons as were willing to proceed to the colony to occupy them. Up to 1818 free passages, as well as grants of land, were offered to such free emigrants as were willing to proceed to the colony, with rations for two years.

Thus, John M'Arthur, in 1804, after reporting the result of his experiments for naturalising the merino in New South Wales before the Privy Council, received a grant of fifty thousand acres, to be selected with the permission of the governor, in any part of the unoccupied territory.

So, too, as long as the settlement depended for subsistence on imported provisions, lands were bestowed on any man, bond or free, who would undertake to support himself after the expiration of the first year of occupation of his farm. With each grant a certain number of convicts were allowed as labourers for every eighty acres, who, as well as the settler and his wife, were rationed for a limited period by the local government, thus receiving from the government stores, beef, mutton,