Mills, R – Chapter VII

Chapter VII: Early Experiments in Systematic Colonization – 1829-1837

 Excerpt from

The Colonization of Australia (1829-42)

The Wakefield Experiment in Empire Building

by Richard Mills

with an introduction by Graham Wallas

Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd, London, 1915

Chapter VII begins at p 155  and runds to p 217. This excerpt begins at p 209 and runs tothe  end of the chapter.

[209] The policy of restriction adopted by the Colonial Office was carried into effect also by their efforts to prevent settlement outside the limits of location. Not only was the practice of squatting widely extended during this period, but many attempts were made to acquire from the Government for settlement land outside the boundaries laid down in 1829. A proposal was made to the Government of New South Wales in 1834, by Colonel Verner and others, to buy land at three shillings and sixpence per acre at Twofold Bay, ninety miles south of the existing boundaries, and to settle there families from the north of Ireland. Bourke, in commenting on the proposal, objected to any lowering of the minimum price of land, but suggested that, in view of the prevailing desire of the colonists to spread beyond the boundaries, the limits of location should be extended southward so as to include this district. In answer to this proposal and to Bourke’s recommendation, Lord Aberdeen, while refusing permission for the proposed new settlement, definitely pronounced against any extension of the boundaries, and gave Bourke instructions as to how to act in case of other similar applications. “Adverting to the general question to which you call my attention, arising out of the foregoing proposition, viz., as to the expediency of extending the location of settlers beyond the present authorized limits so far to the southward as Twofold Bay, I have to acquaint you that notwithstanding the advantages which you have pointed out in your despatch as likely to result from it to the grazing and other agricultural interests of the colony, his Majesty’s [210] Government are not prepared to authorize a measure, the consequence of which would be to spread over a still further extent of territory a population which it was the object of the late land regulations to concentrate, and to divert for a distant object, not immediately necessary to the prosperity of the colony, a portion of its revenues, the whole of which is barely sufficient to maintain in that state of efficiency which is so desirable the various establishments and institutions required by the inhabitants of the districts already occupied. I am glad, however, of the opportunity which you have thus afforded me of expressing my sentiments upon this point, and you will not fail to discountenance any plans which may hereafter be proposed to you for settling the territory beyond the present limits to which the location of settlers is restricted.” In the same year an application for land at Portland Bay, on the south-west coast of what is now Victoria, was made by Mr. Thomas Henty and his sons, the story of whose enterprise in founding the first permanent settlement in that part of Australia is well known. In 1829 they had obtained a grant of over 80,000 acres at Swan River, and had brought out a great deal of capital and stock, but, disappointed with the quality of the soil, they had sailed to Van Diemen’s Land, only to find that the newly-introduced Ripon Regulations prevented them from obtaining a free grant of land there. They now proposed to buy land from the Government at Portland Bay, and in return to abandon the grant at Swan River. Governor Arthur, through whom the application was made, recommended the proposal, and suggested that it would be desirable to settle the land in that neighbourhood. but this request was also refused, and the Hentys continued to “squat” at Portland Bay and to petition the Govern-[211]ment for land. In spite of these applications and the evidence that unauthorized settlement was taking place where authorized settlement was forbidden, the Home Government strove to maintain its policy of restriction. But the logic of facts proved in the end to be too strong even for the Colonial Office, and they were compelled to yield. In 1835 Mr. John Batman sailed from Van Diemen’s Land to Port Phillip, where he concluded a treaty with the natives by which, according to the forms of English law, they granted to him, as representing the Port Phillip Association, about 600,000 acres of land in the neighbourhood. This grant included the present sites of Geelong and Melbourne, and was made for a small consideration of knives, blankets, etc., and a yearly rent of similar articles. The members of the Association at once occupied the land with their sheep and cattle, and asked for confirmation of their treaty from the Home Government. The official attitude of the Colonial Office on the general question of restricting settlement is well shown by a memorandum made by Mr. R. W. Hay on the receipt of Batman’s application. “All schemes of this kind,” he wrote, “have been of late years discountenanced as leading continually to the establishment of fresh settlements and fresh expense – and, if everyone were allowed to follow his own inclination by selecting a fit place of residence on the coast of New Holland, all hopes of restricting the limits of our settlements in that quarter must be at once abandoned.” Although the settlement was made from Van Diemen’s Land and Arthur suggested that it should be subject to the authority of that colony, the territory was within the borders of New South Wales, and Bourke at once made it clear that he claimed to exercise authority there. The land in question being Crown land, there was no difficulty in dismissing the claim made by the Port Phillip Association for the [212] validity of their grant from the natives; but all that Bourke could do in view of Lord Aberdeen’s despatch of 1834 was to issue a proclamation to the effect that the land was within the borders of New South Wales, that the treaty was void as against the Crown, and that trespassers there would be dealt with in the same way as other intruders upon the vacant lands of the Crown. This done, he wrote to the Colonial Office for instructions, and meanwhile the informal and unauthorized settlement at Port Phillip continued to increase. In his despatch to Lord Glenelg advising the opening of Port Phillip to settlement, Bourke gave the same reasons as he had given in the case of Twofold Bay, and entered into the whole question of the policy of restriction. He quarrelled with the doctrine of concentration, and denied that it was suitable to the conditions of New South Wales. “Admitting, as every reasonable person must, that a certain degree of concentration is necessary for the advancement of wealth and civilization, and that it enables government to become at once efficient and economical, I cannot avoid perceiving the peculiarities which, in this colony, render it impolitic, and even impossible, to restrain dispersion within limits that would be expedient elsewhere.” The chief of these peculiarities was that the wool industry, the principal source of the wealth of the colony, required free access to a wide range of country. “The colonists must otherwise restrain the increase, or endeavour to raise artificial food for their stock. Whilst nature presents all around an unlimited supply of the most wholesome nutriment, either course would seem a perverse rejection of the bounty of providence; and the latter would certainly require more labour than can be obtained in the colony, or immigration profitably supply.” Moreover, he frankly confessed that the Government were unable to prevent this dispersion or to remove [213] intruders. He therefore suggested that it would be more to the advantage of the colony to sell the land at Twofold Bay and Port Phillip to the settlers than to try to force them to abandon their settlements. In this way the various institutions of society might be there introduced. “To refrain from their introduction through the fear of encouraging dispersion, is, I am persuaded, a fallacious policy. The dispersion will go on, notwithstanding the discouragement, but accompanied by much evil, that might be prevented by the guidance and control of authority opportunely introduced.” In view of this indictment of their policy of the preceding five years, and of the fact that a settlement was actually being established at Port Phillip, the Home Government made haste to effect a complete change of front, and, in a despatch of April 13th, 1836, Lord Glenelg allowed land to be sold at these places outside the limits of location, and at the same time tried unsuccessfully to reconcile this with the previous policy of restriction. The principle of the Ripon Regulations, he wrote, was to counteract dispersion, but this principle had to be narrowed in its application by the physical peculiarities of the colony, which was essentially a pastoral country. It was further limited by the impossibility of repressing by any laws “the spirit of adventure and speculation” which gave rise to these unauthorized settlements. “All that remains for the Government in such circumstances,” he wrote, “is to assume the guidance and direction of enterprises, which, though it cannot prevent or retard, it may yet conduct to happy results. It may indeed admit of serious doubt whether the settlers at Port Phillip and Twofold Bay have not in reality given birth to undertakings which deliberate reflection would have recommended rather than discouraged.” In other words, he admitted that the policy of restriction of settlement [214] was unsuited to the needs of the colony and impossible to enforce. The despatch also approved of the measures which Bourke had taken, and, on its receipt in 1836, he threw the district of Port Phillip open to settlement under the regulations of 1831.

It is now possible to answer briefly the question how far the Wakefield system had been introduced into New South Wales by 1837.

In the first place, a uniform system of sale of waste lands had been established, but no attempt had been made to secure a sufficient price. Lord Glenelg, indeed, in the beginning of 1837, reminded Bourke that the instructions of 1831 had given the Governor discretion to raise the price, and that he was at liberty to do so now if he thought it necessary; but Bourke replied that such a step was unnecessary, because competition by auction was sufficient to obtain the full value of the land. From this answer it may be gathered that the motives activating Bourke in fixing a price were not those of Wakefield. Burke thought he had fixed a proper price, when by auction the full value of the land was obtained; Wakefield, on the other hand, wished for a price which would be sufficient to prevent a labourer from becoming a land owner to soon, whether or not that price represented a market value of the land.

Again, there was not in New South Wales during this period anything like the full liberty of appropriation of land which Wakefield demanded as a necessary condition of the working of his theory. The Governor’s discretion still decided what land within the limits of location was to be put up for sale, while the policy of preventing settlement outside those limits was totally [215] foreign to the ideas of Wakefield, who would have desired that any settler might purchase at the minimum price as much land as he needed in any place and at any time he wished.

In the next place, part only of the proceeds of the land sales was devoted to emigration, and the government expressly avoided pledging themselves to treat the land fund as sacred to this purpose. Moreover, the emigration itself was neither well selected nor well-managed. Wakefield wished that the whole business of land sales and emigration should be conducted by a public and responsible body charged with determining a sufficient price and with expending the resulting money in well selected emigration. Indeed, the only part of the land regulations which would have had his approval was that dealing with squatting. To give everyone who was anxious to occupy unsold land for pastoral purposes a right to do so on payment of a small fee, and at the same time to provide that the land might at any time be sold for purposes of agriculture, was exactly the principle for which Wakefield had always argued.

The Wakefield system, then, had only been very partially applied in New South Wales by 1837, but the important principle of selling land and using some of the proceeds in emigration was well established. Meanwhile, Wakefield had not been idle. During the whole period he had been working to found the new colony of South Australia, and, in 1836, he was able to come forward in public and expound his views on colonization. The systematic colonizers were satisfied neither with the changes in New South Wales, nor with the way in which the South Australian colony had been inaugurated by the Act of 1834; and they contrived to get a Select Committee of the House of Commons appointed to sit in 1836 to examine into the question of the disposal of waste lands in the Australian colonies, at the Cape of Good Hope, and in the West Indies. [216] Apparently they meant to include the British North American colonies within the scope of the inquiry, but in this they were unsuccessful. The Select Committee was strong and influential, containing as it did such men as H.G. Ward (chairman), Sir George Grey, W. Hutt, G. Poulett Scrope, W. E. Gladstone, J. A. Roebuck, Francis Baring, and H. L. Bulwer. No doubt Wakefield was not above preparing a case for the Committee. Many of the members were predisposed favourably to his views, and the Wakefield theory had so many supporters and so few opponents amongst the witnesses who gave evidence that it was fairly obvious in which direction the report would tend. Of the eleven witnesses examined, five were decided adherents of the Wakefield theory, one was hostile to some parts of it, two represented the Colonial Office, while only three colonists in all gave evidence, two from Van Diemen’s Land, and one from Trinidad. Wakefield was the chief witness, and he was seen to great advantage in expounding and developing his theory, answering objections, and condemning all other methods of disposing of waste land.

The Committee’s report, which was short, was practically a recommendation of the Wakefield system. They approved of what had already been done in the Australian colonies between 1831 and 1836, and suggested further action to extend and complete the principle of land sales and emigration. The principle of a minimum price they recommended should be established by an act of Parliament, in order to give it “a character of permanency and stability, which it does not possess at present”; but they gave no opinion as to its amount, “conceiving that the whole tenor of the evidence goes [217] to prove that it must vary according to the circumstances of each colony, and can only be determined, in any one, by the test of experience.” A further recommended that the money provided by land sales should be used to promote selected emigration to each colony in proportion to the amount raised there, preference being given to young married couples; that on the security of the land fund a loan might be raised for emigration; and that the whole arrangements connected with the sale of land, including the fixing of the price, the surveying of the land, and the direction of assisted emigration, should be in the hands of a Board resident in London, responsible either to some department of Government or directly to Parliament.

End of chapter.