Alfred Webb

“ The land grievance; the inadequacy of the supplies of land as compared with the wants of the population; the want of sufficiently frequent opportunities, and upon reasonable terms, for the acquision of a piece of land; the difficulty, amounting with thousands to an impossibility, of investing their small capital or their earnings of gold upon a section of ground; from want of which facilities many thousands, it is to be feared, have left and are still leaving this colony to enrich other countries with their industry and capital. ”

“ Chisholm and other benevolent persons, to encourage emigration and send out willing hands to turn the Australian wilderness into a garden, were very well in theory. But these philanthropists overlooked, or were ignorant of the fact, that, with the exception of the squatters (who are but a small portion of the community) , the bushmen had no homes, nor any portion of the wilderness to turn into gardens; that for want of these they are leading a half-savage life, rarely stopping with one employer more than a few weeks, and spending their earnings in gross excess and licentiousness. ”

“ New diggings were constantly being discovered, chiefly through the enterprize of Americans, and the yield of gold reached the high average of one million sterling per month. Still the average earnings on the gold fields were below the average rate of wages throughout the rest of the colony. Indeed it must always be so in gold-digging countries; for so long as a man can live and support himself at the diggings (where he has a chance of making his fortune) he will not be likely to leave them, unless more than his average earnings are offered him elsewhere. ”

“ A short sketch of the rise and progress of this colony will, perhaps, justify me in the conclusion to which I came, that most of these evils are to be attributed to the difficulty of procuring land; the labourer, in receipt of large wages, being thus deprived of the inducement to save his earnings and invest them in a settled home. ”

“ The original settlers took possession, as squatters, of as much land as they found necessary for the pasturage of their flocks and herds. This was, indeed, the most natural arrangement at the commencement of the colony, nor had the government power to order it otherwise. Those who wanted to buy land paid five shillings an acre. Things went on very well in this way; the squatters first occupying the land and then buying it for themselves, or else giving place to others and moving back upon unoccupied tracts. ”

“ People would not pay the high price for land; settlers continued to spread over the country as squatters; the land-sales almost entirely ceased, and so did emigration.
Still the home government was prepared to go farther in backing up Mr. Wakefield; and in 1842 they passed an Act (5 and 6 Vict. c. 36) "for regulating the sale of waste land belonging the crown in the Australian colonies." The substance of this Act was, that no lands must be held unless they had been bought or were held by licence; the lowest upset price to be £1 per acre ”

“ They recommended an entire alteration in the administration on the gold fields; the extension of political rights to the diggers as well as to the other sections of the community, and the imposition of a very low licence-fee to maintain a small police force at the diggings. To supply the deficit in the revenue, caused by the abolition of the old licence fee, they proposed an export duty of 2s. 6d. per ounce (or about three percent.) on gold. But, above all things, they recommended that land should be freely thrown into the market. ”

“ The plan of this gentleman was to sell the lands by auction at the high upset price of £1 per acre, and thus secure the land in the hands of men of property, and keep the colonists concentrated. The proceeds of the sales were to be devoted to the introduction of free emigrants, so that the settlers of capital might be well supplied with labour at low rates. ”

“ The treasures obtained at the diggings by men unaccustomed to such a flood of wealth, were squandered in the most reckless manner. Melbourne was full of lucky diggers, whose only object was to get rid of their money as fast as possible. ”

“ I knew a man who was employed as cook for thirty shillings a week, and who had given up a situation of £500 per annum, in London, to better himself in Australia; I have seen ex-Manchester cotton-spinners, and army and navy officers, working at the hardest manual labour ”

“ Many of these have retired, after being six or twelve months in business, with fortunes of £40,000 or £50,000. I have known many instances of men spending £800 or £900 at a public house in two or three weeks. It was not alone by diggers that this madness was practised; the high wages received by workmen vanished, to a great extent, in the same manner. At that time labourers were paid fifteen shillings for a day's work; carpenters, twenty-eight shillings; bricklayers, thirty shillings; and plasterers even three pounds per day. ”

“ The recipients of these enormous wages were often worse off (owing to the ruinous way in which they spent their money) than if they had been working at home for low wages and living on bread and water. ”

“ They were granted leases, (with the right of pre-emption, for 320 acres or upwards, at one pound per acre without auction) and at the termination the lease they might claim compensation for improvement. The rent, which was calculated on a poll-tax of 4,000 sheep and 600 head of cattle as a minimum number, effectually excluded all small capitalists from the occupation of the land; the upset price of one pound per acre remained the same.
However, notwithstanding these regulations and changes, the district of Port Philip continued to thrive, and in 1849 the population amounted to 60,000. ”