The emigrants were not, on the whole, inferior to other persons of their education and calling; and were often justified in resisting the tyrannical spirit and disposition to oppress, which the habits of colonial life do not extinguish. This emigration, amounting to 7,000 for both colonies, is an epoch to be remembered for its influence on their fate.
These events revolutionised the social state of the colonies. Free workmen and their families formed an intermediate class, whose interests were hostile to a penal government, and to bond labor in every form. The individual importance of employers consoled them for their political dependence; and the subservience of transportation to their material prosperity, reconciled them to the restrictions it imposed. The free workman found it an obstacle to his advancement: it depressed his wages and debased his position, but gave him nothing. If his industry raised him, he yet retained the sympathies of his early life: he remained distrustful of the rich, jealous of rank, and fond of the equality of human rights. Trial by jury, legislative assemblies, and official responsibility, found earnest advocates, where they had often been mere rallying points of personal discontent.
All this was foreseen by Arthur: when free laborers were intruded by the crown, the great bond of his system was broken.
DISPOSAL OF CROWN LANDS IN NEW SOUTH WALES AND VAN DIEMEN'S LAND. | ||||
| Authority. | Date. | Terms. | Superseded. | Remarks. |
| King's sign manual to governors of New South Wales. | 1787 and 1789. | Residence on the grant. Cultivation and improvement. Reservation of naval timber. Quit rent: emancipists. 6d. per 30 acres; free settlers, 2s. per 100 acres, after ten years. | 1810. | 100 acres only to any person, over the quantity allowed to emancipists. |
| Governor Macquarie. | January 1, 1810. | Quit-rent, 2s. per 100 acres. Cultivation of a proportion (20th part) in five years. Reservation of naval timber. Right of forming highways. Non-alienation in five years. | November 30, 1821. | Town allotments usually leased at Hobart Town for twenty-one years, quit rent 30s. per acre; 7 only were granted, 1820. Allotments were occupied at Launceston on permission of the commandant.—Bigge's Report. |
| Governor Brisbane. | July 11, 1822. 1823. | Omits cultivation clause, and saddles every 100 acres with a convict servant. This was cancelled by indorsement on some grants, on condition of cultivation. Grants liable to quit-rent of 15s. per 100 acres. | Colonial Office, November 1824. Notified in Van Diemen's Land, 18th May, 1825. | |
| Colonial Office. | 1824. April, 1826. | Convict clause inserted. Purchase money repaid, if claimed within ten years, or for the redemption of quit rent. Quit rent 5 per cent. value. Settlers who could obtain no convicts, allowed abatement of half quit-rent; or a new purchase at half price, who should expend five times value of the grants, given or sold them. | Convict clause withdrawn, in 3rd edit. of notice, 1827. | Town lots granted on specified expenditure within three years, and non-alienation for 18 months. |
| Governor Arthur. | 1828. | Land Board established; capital required, £500 for each square mile granted. Land sold at highest tender; one-half left on mortgage for twelve years, at 5 per cent. Precious metals reserved. | January 20, 1831. | |
| Colonial Office. | January 20, 1831. | Order: all land to be sold by public sale; upset price 5s., conveyed in fee simple at a peppercorn rent. Precious metals reserved, and indigenous produce for public works. | August, 1838. | |
| Colonial Office. | August, 1838. 1842. | 12s. per acre. £1 per acre. | 1842. 1845.[184] | |
FOOTNOTES:
[177] Report on the Disposal of Crown Land, 1836.
[178] England and America.
[179] The plan of selling crown lands, and appropriating the proceeds to emigration, was claimed as his own by Galt, the novelist and projector. See Life of John Galt, vol. ii. p. 135.
[180] Edinburgh Review, 1849.