The Bushman — Life in a New Country

by Edward Wilson Landor

They alone, among British subjects, are living under an absolute Monarchy; the caprices of which render property insecure and of uncertain value; neutralizing industry, paralyzing enterprise, and crushing with fatal authority the energies and the spirits of the people.

In the absolute recklessness of colonial rule, no sooner does private enterprise raise its head, and throw out the first feelers on the way to wealth, than a watchful government steps forward, and careful only to secure gain to itself, crushes out (in the first feebleness of existence,) the germ of vitality.

In all new countries in which the sources of wealth are imperfectly developed, the expense of applying the means necessary to their development is so enormous, as to leave but small profit to the speculator. Labour is always dear in new countries, where there is so large an outlet afforded to the labourer to escape from the toils of servitude, and become himself an occupant or an owner of the soil. All that he gains by the exchange is an ideal independence; which is, unhappily, but too attractive to the uneasy spirit of modern improvement.

The prosperity of a colony is the aggregate of individual wealth. the prosperous advance of the colonist, is, therefore, the first duty of a superintending Government. But the first aim of that watchful guardian is ever to wring from the settler as much as may be extracted by pressure. The lowest demand for land, which would be dear at half-a-crown an acre, is eight times that amount. No sooner does the settler, by his science or industry, discover some lucrative opening, than government steps in with its restrictions, its taxes and duties, and at once cuts down the budding promise. If the design be to bring to light the mineral wealth of the country, royalties are immediately imposed; and no chance of profit is left to the speculator when the rents are raised according to the probabilities of success. It is the same with all other speculations; no one will embark, even in a timber-trade, when he knows that he is placing his capital at the mercy of a grasping and short-sighted Government.

How much more lucrative, and how much more statesman-like would it prove, were our rulers to display as much good policy as the peasants of Norfolk, who do not pluck their geese until they be well feathered! Colonists, like cabbages, should be allowed to acquire the necessary strength, and attain the proper dimensions, before they be seriously operated upon. You might then cut and nick them with reasonable hope of their sprouting forth anew.

But the worst evil of an absolute Government arises from the destruction in the minds of the people of all faith and confidence in its truth and honour.

One Secretary of State countermands the edicts of his predecessor; and as the Executive Government of a colony is composed of the paid servants of the Crown, and is merely the machine of the Secretary for the time being, the ordinances which it promulgates are distinguished by only one uniform feature—the announcement of broken promises and betrayed faith.

The inhabitants of colonies, disappointed and deceived, have no trust in their rulers, and dare not invest their capital in enterprises which may be ruined in a moment by an arbitrary edict. At one period, for instance, they may have been induced, upon the faith of the Government, to purchase remission tickets, which entitle the owner to a certain quantity of land wherever he may choose to select it. A succeeding Government confines this right of selection within certain narrow limits; whilst another decides that the holder shall be allowed to purchase with these tickets only land that is entirely valueless. At one period men are encouraged to attempt the production of colonial spirits; but no sooner is a large amount of capital expended, than it is made illegal to distil. Some parties are permitted to purchase land at a distance from the capital: and after years of toil and expense are deprived of all protection from the Government, and allowed no compensation for its withdrawal.

But it were vain to attempt to enumerate the acts of broken faith on the part of an absolute Government, from whose decree there is no appeal, and from whose oppression no redress. The moral evil to colonies is crushing and fatal.

The best informed among English statesmen know nothing of colonies: but their hardihood in legislating for them is, unhappily, equal to their ignorance. It was only last year (1846) that the bill for the government of Western Australia was (according to newspaper report) opposed in the House of Lords by a noble duke, on the ground, as his grace alleged in an animated and interesting speech, of the wretchedly immoral state of the colony, arising from the system of transportation, which so deluged the country with convicts that it was now a perfect hell upon earth! A noble lord, then Under-secretary for the Colonies, apologised, with the best grace he could assume, for this lamentable state of things, and assured the noble duke that the Government was quite aware of the evil, and was turning its attention to a remedy for it. Had any one of the noble lords present known anything at all about the subject of the debate, he might in a few words have relieved the anxiety of the Government, by informing it that Western Australia is not, and never has been, a penal settlement—that convicts are not sent thither for punishment; that even a single bush-ranger has never been known within the territory; and that, in the words of an Adelaide journal, "it is as free from stain as any of the rural districts of England."