government by Phillip, and for many years afterwards, the convicts were chiefly dependent on imported food. These evils were not due to any unwise economy. On the contrary, if the results of the experiment were discouraging, its cost was extravagant. In March 1791, when Cost of the rather more than 2000 convicts had been shipped, colony. and 1800 others were ready for shipment, the mother-country had expended £385,000, and the civil and military establishments of the colony alone were estimated to require £10,000 a year for their support.1 In 1793 it was stated in Parliament that the colony had already absorbed £600,000. The journey of every convict cost £20, his maintenance in the colony £60 a year. In 1810 the colony still cost the mother-country £70,000 a year, "in addition to a great annual expenditure incurred in the transmission of stores and merchandise, and in the freight of transports." 3 2 A huge expense would have excited opposition if the success of the experiment had been assured; the expense seemed the more objectionable because the experiment failed. Failure of The most hopeful projectors soon discovered that a the experiself-supporting settlement could not be formed out ment. of a few thousand convicts and their guards. In the infancy of the colony, Phillip urged that free immigrants, men with capital and agricultural experience, should be sent out to him. "Fifty farmers," he wrote, "would do more in one year than one thousand convicts." A small tentative step was at once taken to carry out Phillip's wishes. A few families were embarked for Sydney, with the promise of land, labour, implements, and food. Later Governors conferred grants of land on convicts whose sentences had expired, and on the officers of the regiments sent out to guard the colony.5 Thus, in the course of years, a population slowly 1 Ann. Reg., 1791, Chron., pp. 66-79. 2 Ibid., 1793, Hist., p. 170. Free settlers. 3 Report of Select Committee of 1812, in ibid., 1813, Chron., p. 532. 4 Rusden's Australia, vol. i. pp. 37, 40 note, 160. 5 Phillip in five years granted 3389 acres of land to settlers; Grose, his successor, in two years 10,674 acres; Paterson in nine months, 4965 acres. Rusden's Australia, vol. i. p. 190. A more detailed list of the grants up to 1806 will be found in ibid., p. 402. grew up round the new settlements. In 1806 New South Wales is said to have contained 7519 persons; its dependencies, Norfolk Island and Van Diemen's Land, 1943 souls; in 1810 the population of New South Wales, according to one census, amounted to 10,454; according to another authority, to 11,590. In 1821 it had risen to 38,778 persons.1 In such a colony social difficulties were necessarily numerous. Of the 10,454 persons living in New South Wales in 1810, 5513 were men, 2721 were children, and only 2220 were women. There were, therefore, nearly five men for every two Dispropor women in the colony. Such a state of things would tion of sexes. not have tended to produce morality in any society. As the majority of the women were drawn from a degraded class, it was fruitful of gross immorality. Wise men had the good sense to see that the best chance of producing a moral atmosphere was to increase the supply of women; in 1807 the authorities allowed a number of the wives of transported criminals, who chose to do so, to accompany their husbands ; and the Committee of 1812, appointed on Romilly's motion, recommended that the facilities already thus afforded should be greatly extended.3 2 Grave, however, as were the consequences of immorality, intemperance caused even greater misery in the infant colony. During the governorship of Phillip, indeed, sobriety was strictly enforced, and the importation of spirituous liquors prohibited. But in the governorship of his successor these precautions were practically removed. Officers of the army had always been allowed to import spirits. On their receiving land grants under Grose, they found that the cheapest and easiest way of procuring labour was to pay for it in intoxicating liquors. Hence arose a traffic which Grose took no pains to repress, which demoralised the convict, injured the free settler, produced a taste for alcohol, led to illicit distillation, and was ultimately only checked in the governorship of King, and 1 Cf. Rusden's Australia, vol. i. p. 499, and Ann. Reg., 1813, Chron., p. 415. 2 Ibid., 1807, Chron., p. 362. 8 Ibid., 1813, p. 530; Life of Romilly, vol. iii. p. 9. further restricted during the rule of his successors. Intemperance has been the fruitful cause of misery and crime, but perhaps drunkenness never assumed more terrible proportions or led to greater trouble than it occasioned in the infant settlement of New South Wales.1 John Mac Any one, then, who had patiently studied the statistics of Australia during the opening years of the nineteenth century might have been puzzled to name the advantages which were likely to result from the foundation of the settlement. Yet there were, even at that time, causes in operation which were slowly securing success for the colony. In 1791 the same ship which had brought out a load of fever-stricken convicts carried a young man, John MacArthur, who had bought a commission in the corps which the Government decided to form for New South Wales, and who was Arthur. resolute to seek his fortune in the colony.2 Three years afterwards, when land was granted by Grose to officers, MacArthur purchased "sixty Bengal ewes and lambs which had been imported from Calcutta," and "two Irish ewes and a young ram. The Indian sheep produced coarse hair, but by crossing the two breeds" MacArthur "had the satisfaction to see the lambs of the Indian ewes bear a mingled fleece of hair and wool." He had the perspicacity to infer from this circumstance that the climate of the colony was suited to the production of wool, and he had the courage to speculate on the conclusions which he formed. It so happened that a flock of Merino sheep was on sale at the Cape of Good Hope, that its value was not understood by the Dutch, and that an agent whom MacArthur employed succeeded in securing five ewes and three rams from among them. Taking every precaution to preserve the breed pure, MacArthur subsequently added to his flock 1200 sheep which he purchased at the Cape.3 In 1801 he carried to England specimens of the wool which he had obtained from his flock; and in 1804 he succeeded 1 Rusden's Australia, vol. i. pp. 162, 168, 171, 231-244. 2 Ibid., vol. i. p. 59. 3 Ibid., pp. 211, 212; cf. Hansard, vol. xlviii. p. 874, where the purchase is said to have consisted of three rams and four ewes. in obtaining a grant of 5000 acres of land and an assignment of convicts for the prosecution of his experiment.1 The growth of sheep. Confident as MacArthur was, he could hardly have foreseen, and he did not himself live to see, the full consequence of what he was doing. In 1800 New South Wales possessed 6757 sheep, or probably as many sheep as there were people in the colony; in 1821 she had 120,000 sheep, or about three sheep for every person in the colony. In 1834, when the population had risen to between 50,000 and 60,000,2 the sheep had increased to 1,000,000. In 1839, when the population exceeded 100,000,3 the sheep numbered 3,000,000. In 1856 the colony contained 265,000 persons and 7,700,000 sheep. In the next twenty-five years the population was trebled, and the huge stock of sheep increased more than fourfold.5 Australian If, indeed, the ideas of the original settlers had been correct, and if New South Wales had consisted of only a belt of sandy land between the Blue Mountains and the ocean, exploration, the progress which has thus been recorded could never have occurred. And, strange to say, though the colony was occupied twelve years before the eighteenth century closed, more than twelve years of the nineteenth century passed before explorers, seeking in a year of drought fresh pastures for their cattle, crossed the mountains, and learned for the first time the rich inheritance which was before them.6 Long, however, before a few hardy men forced their way through brushwood and mountain, other travellers, with less danger, 1 Rusden's Australia, vol. i. p. 365 seq. 2 There were 51,155 persons in the colony in 1831. Ibid., vol. ii. p. 48. 3 119, 118 in 1841. Ibid., vol. ii. p. 191. For the sheep see Hansard, vol. xlviii. p. 874. 4 Rusden's Australia, vol. iii. pp. 56, 57. 5 Ibid., pp. 58 and 620. 6 Ibid., vol. i. p. 508 seq., and for accounts of other explorers, Ann. Reg., 1816, Chron. p. 194; ibid., 1818, Chron., p. 583; ibid., 1819, Chron., p. 88. Romilly's Committee, writing in 1812, said: "The settlement in New South Wales is bounded on the north, west, and south by a range of hills known as the Blue Mountains, beyond which no one has been able to penetrate the country some have with difficulty been as far as 100 miles in the interior, but beyond 60 miles it appears to be nowhere practicable for agricultural purposes; ibid., 1813, Chron,, p. 518. had explored the coasts of Australia, and discovered, among other things, the land-locked bay on which Melbourne now stands. The short peace of Amiens gave, indeed, an impulse to maritime discovery which had no effect on internal exploration. For Napoleon, during the brief respite, endeavoured to assert the claim of France to some portion of the great island which Britain was making her own; and Britons at home, and colonists in New South Wales, though they had themselves no use for the vast territory which was gradually gaining shape on their charts, had no mind to admit foreign and unfriendly nations to any share in it. French and British thus ran a race for the acquisition of the unsettled territory; and though Flinders, who led the British to discovery, was destined ultimately to languish in a French prison, his skill and energy secured for the British the whole southern shore of the new territory.1 Peace had for a moment startled statesman and colonist with the prospect of a French occupation of portions of Australia. The return of war removed all chance of foreign interference. No European nation could hope to gain a foothold in the Pacific Ocean without the leave of Britain; and the few thousand British who still occupied Australia were left to work out their own future undisturbed. Such a state of things, however favourable it may have been to the development of New South Wales, was not likely to encourage the formation of fresh settlements. Port Phillip, as the great land-locked inlet on the southern coast had been called, was abandoned; 2 orders were given for the evacuation of Norfolk Island;3 and Romilly's Committee of 1812 recorded a distinct opinion that " more benefit . . . will be derived from the cultivation and improvement of the settlements that are already formed than from the formation of new and distant establishments, whatever may be the encouragement that a fertile soil and an advantageous situation may appear to hold out." 4 1 Rusden's Australia, vol. i. p. 310 seq. 2 Ibid., p. 344. |