Of course I am here addressing those who have in their own hands the means of emigrating. Not only will the £15 a head be wanting in bringing out his family, but also something on which to live when the new country is first reached. But, presuming that a working man with a working family can raise £200,—a very strong presumption I fear,—I do not know that he could do better than establish himself as a farmer in Western Australia.

I believe that Western Australia has no agent at home, as have the other colonies, a part and perhaps the chief part of whose business it is to facilitate the emigration of those who intend settling themselves in the new colony. Why should we pay an agent to send us emigrants when no emigrants will come to us? That no doubt is the feeling of a desponding Western Australian. And yet the colony has, as I think, with much wisdom offered most alluring terms to emigrants. At present, however, I do not see how these terms are to be made known to persons at home. I say this as an apology for the insertion here of details which cannot, I fear, interest the ordinary reader.

It is admitted on all hands that Western Australia cannot be made to thrive until her population shall be increased by new-comers. Twenty-five thousand people may perhaps live together in comfort within confines which shall be sufficiently extended to afford to all a sufficiency of land, and at the same time compact enough to bring them together. But Western Australia is an enormous country, and its scanty population is spread about it by hundreds. The so-called settled districts are twelve in number, and the average area of each is more than half as big as England. The average population of each district is only just above 2,000. Let the English reader conceive the ten northern counties of England with 2,000 inhabitants between them! And in saying this I am speaking of the settled districts,—not of the distant regions which are claimed by the colony as belonging to it, and which will remain probably for centuries, perhaps for ever, uninhabited. An influx of population is necessary to Western Australia, not only that there may be enough of men and women to form a community and administer to each other’s wants, but that the very nature may be changed of those upon whose industry the colony now depends. In its deep distress it accepted convicts, and was saved, as I think, from utter collapse by doing so. But the salvation effected was not healthy in its nature. I have given the figures over and over again. To make up a population of twenty-five thousand souls, ten thousand male convicts have been sent! Life and property are fairly safe. Work is done. The place is by no means a lawless place. Those who emerge from their sentences reformed are encouraged to prosper. Those who come out unreformed are controlled and kept down. But nevertheless the convict flavour pervades the whole,—to the great detriment of that part of the working population which has always been free. This evil is of course curing itself by degrees. The colony receives no more convicts, and the very birth and growth of its young citizens will gradually obliterate the flavour. But this would be done much more quickly and much more effectually by an influx of new blood. Nothing would tend so much to the improvement of the people as any step that would enable the enfranchised convict to move about among his fellow-labourers without being known as a convict. It is so in New South Wales and Tasmania. Intimate intercourse will probably reveal the secrets of a man’s past life in any country; and if a man once degraded afterwards rise high, his former degradation will be remembered. But in these once convict colonies time is having its effect, and men’s minds are not always referring to the matter. It does not affect the rate of wages, nor the character of the work to be done. The once convict does not feel that every one regards him as a convict, and does not therefore work as convicts work. In Western Australia the man who never was a convict will fall into such habits of work, simply because they form the rule of life around him. Nothing but an increasing population will cure this quickly.

But the very fact that it is so, the very injury to which the colony has been subjected in this matter, gives in one respect the surest promise that here a new-comer may find a prosperous home. In England, as all the world knows, residences of all kinds are to be had at a much cheaper rate to the east of London than at the west. The east has all its disadvantages,—which are chiefly of a sentimental or fashionable nature. The man who can despise these may live there in a commodious house, who would be forced to put up with straitened quarters if he allowed himself to follow the fashion. Western Australia is the east side of London. The objections to it, bad as they are, concern chiefly sentiment and fashion. I do not recommend the man who is taking out £20,000 to a colony, with the idea of becoming a great man, to go there; but to him who feels that with £200 or £300 he has but little hope in England, and who would prefer independence and property of his own to the composite luxuries and miseries of a crowded country, I think that Western Australia offers perhaps as good a field for his small capital as any other colony.

I have endeavoured, as I have gone on, to indicate the natural sources of wealth to which the colony has a right to look. To those that I have already named I should add the breeding of horses, for which it seems to be specially adapted. At present the business is limited by the difficulty which the breeders have in disposing of their produce. India is their great market,—together with Batavia and Singapore. But there are no middle traders to take the young horses off the hands of the breeders,—who cannot themselves breed horses, and charter ships, and conduct the sales. This again is one of the evils to which a scanty population is ever subject.

I have no doubt that the exportation of jarrah-wood and of pearl-shell will become large and prosperous trades. The former will probably be by far the most beneficial to the colony, as it will be prosecuted by men in the colony,—whereas the pearl-shell will be sought and taken away by coasting strangers. It is hard, too, to believe that a country should be so prolific in grapes as this is without some result. I will not take upon myself to say that I drank West Australian wine with delight. I took it with awe and trembling, and in very small quantities. But we all know that the art of making wine does not come in a day;—and even should it never be given to the colony to have its Château This, or Château That, its 1841, its 1857, or 1865, or the like,—still it may be able to make raisins against the world.

Gold of course may turn up even yet. For myself, I look to corn and fruit, and perhaps oil,—to the natural products springing from the earth,—as the source of the future comfort of this enormous territory.

INDEX.

SOUTH AUSTRALIA.