Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/96

 and flour of the same quality as that which they themselves had the profit of selling to the commissariat.

Up to the time of Governor Darling the produce of the colony was so uncertain, and the means of profitably employing the prisoners so limited, that every means was adopted to induce settlers to relieve the Government of the care and cost of convicts for whom there was no work.

In Macquarie's time the settler usually obtained, in addition to a supply of farm labourers, the use of a "clearing-gang," which cut down, burned, rolled, and cleared the huge trees from great tracts that no one would have attempted to cultivate without such assistance.

Under these rude means, up to 1820, the last year of Macquarie's government, 400,000 acres passed into the hands of private individuals. Brisbane granted 180,000 acres at a yearly quit rent of 2s. per 100 acres, and 573,000 at 15s. annual quit rent per 100 acres; he also sold between December, 1824, and May, 1825, 369,050 acres at 5s. an acre, giving a long credit, with a quit rent of 2s. per 100 acres in addition. In 1828, under Darling, the total number of acres alienated amounted to 2,906,346. But this acreage cannot, for any useful purpose, be compared with that of cultivated Europe; large patches and vast continuous tracts are so barren or so thickly timbered as to be of no more value than those Connemara estates offered for sale at 5s. an acre, and dear at the money.

It must also be noted that these quit rents were scarcely ever collected, but allowed to run in arrear until, under the government of Sir George Gipps, they exceeded in amount the value of the whole fee-simple of many estates, and became the source of a very formidable grievance.

Under Governors Brisbane, Darling, and the first years of Bourke's government, it was usual to make grants to colonists in proportion to the amount of capital they imported in cash or implements of husbandry.

In 1822 Commissioner Bigge recommended that sales of land contiguous to grants issued in consideration of capital imported into the colony, should be made at the rate of 10s. an acre for land in very favourable situations, and 5s. an acre in more remote situations. But this suggestion remained a dead letter.

In 1825 Lord Bathurst, as already stated, announced to the Australian Agricultural Company, but did not carry out his determination, that instead of free grants as theretofore, land in New South Wales would be "put up to sale according to a system similar in many