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returning from the eastward, and in the morning we perceived large flocks of crows coming from the same direction; indications of a fresh water lake existing, at no great distance, in that direction. This morning we left the party, and proceeded N.N.W. twenty-five miles, over a perfectly sandy desert, and encamped in the evening, with no food or water for the horses. The following day the country for the same distance was precisely of the same character, when, towards the evening, we entered a forest of she-oak, bounding the main southern arm of Lake Alexandrina. Here we found splendid food for our horses, that had fasted for the last forty-eight hours. Next morning we proceeded four miles over a very pretty country bordering the lake, the rich alluvial flats extending from the lake for from half a mile to a mile. The waters of the lake were slightly brackish, but fit for use; and excellent water was found at the well at which we halted. We remained on this beautiful spot for this and the following day.

Thursday, 8th.-After crossing a belt of sandy country for a distance of twelve miles, which separates the south from the north arm of the lake, we struck the borders of the lake, here again surrounded with rich alluvial soil, destitute of timber, and fit for the plough. In the evening we encamped at the spot where the River Murray empties itself into the lake; and next morning we crossed the river by a boat which was stationed there. The river is here 170 yards wide, fresh and very deep. On either bank the beds of reeds extend in width about the distance of a mile. The limestone rocks continue here, and it appears that the whole country from the Glenelg to this point of the Murray is one bed of limestone, alternately covered with sand, swamp, and strips of alluvial deposit, covered with grass and she-oak. In the whole distance, with the exception of the streamlet we have mentioned, there is not a single course, although water could anywhere be found by sinking wells. I think it probable that, from the appearance of the country inland, and more to the eastward, fresh water lakes will be found.

Three days afterwards we reached Adelaide, through the Mount Barker country, already too well known to need description, having performed a pleasant journey in perfect safety from Melbourne within a month.

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NO NECESSITY FOR THE FARMER IN AUSTRALIA FELIX.

Is the land revenue to become extinct; or does the government intend to make landed property of any value; that which it has sold already, or may wish to sell?

Many causes have been ostensibly put forward to account for the public distress in the colony of Australia Felix. Speculation is said to have done much: this is the great and general charge. One intelligent writer mentions the disgust of British capitalists; whilst our resident judge from the bench censures public officers for countenancing, by their own conduct, the speculative mania, and thereby adding to the evil of a vicious state of things. Tampering with the land-sale regulations is another cause; and there yet are other and greater. That we are governed by people who reside at a distance; who, if they know anything of our public condition and interests, have palpably disregarded them; is one fatal and lamentable circumstance. Could speculation to any injurious extent ever have existed had Sir George Gipps clearly foreseen and done his duty? Certainly not. Land was so dribbled out by our local government as to raise its value extraordinarily; to buy and sell it was a thriving and lucrative trade; it was no speculation; no lottery; any person seemed wofully deficient in the organ of acquisitiveness who neglected to embark in it. To purchase and re-sell land was the well-known highway to sudden and incalculable wealth, in Australia Felix. Yet the Sydney government, by its apathy or good-will, fostered this forestalling of the future, this unsafe and precocious condition of the province.

Looking back into the history of the elder settled portion of New South Wales, and of Tasmania, we find that their advancement in wealth and general prosperity, was, as it ought to be, the work of years, steady, healthful, and progressive. There might be fluctuations, there are in all newly settled countries, seasons of scarcity and of abundance, good and bad times; still there was progress, accumulation of wealth, in the main.

Wealth there was, great prosperity, and the rumour of it travelled through all lands. Nothing was more commonly talked of in England than the extraordinary opulence of the people of the old district of this new portion of the globe.

Then unfortunately our splendid region of the Australasian continent became known and notorious. Capitalists from a distance flocked in, Colonial and British, and the result is before us.

Possessing a most delicious climate, and a soil not to be despised, with a range of glorious pasturage almost unlimited; most abundantly furnished by nature and Providence with good, and the means of it; how different under wise, liberal, and efficient management had been its history!

As it is, it has in a great measure proved the grave of capital, Colonial and British. Sound it is at the heart nevertheless; a good land and a desirable; unfortunate only in its maltreated infancy; still luminous through clouds of evil; and full of intimations of a brilliant future destiny.

Still we feel that "sufficient for the day is the evil thereof:" though our calamities are temporary, they are grievous.

Did Sir George Gipps, at the time land was selling in 1840 for such enormous sums, denounce it as a mania? He either thought that state of Port Phillip public temperament of mind sane and healthful, or why did he calculate, why did he build upon its continuance, why assure the home-government of his ability to furnish from the future land-fund such vast sums for immigration purposes; so as to earn a reprimand from it for delusion? It is evident he had himself been deluded, and either lacked the acumen to discern the real cause, or the honest boldness ingenuously to confess it.

It is easy to talk about causes, and to willingly forget or overlook the fatal part he had in them, and to make his present knowledge and experience appear to have been his in the past; whereas, unluckily, the facts will not bear him out. Hear his Excellency a little on this subject in his Legislative Council, Tuesday, May 10th, 1842:

"It is difficult to account precisely for the mania of specu lation, which at times affects all trading communities; but the chief exciting cause of it in New South Wales was, I have no doubt, that for several years preceding 1840, capital was poured into the colony faster than, for want of labour, it could be safely employed, and that consequently, it passed, by some means or other, into the hands of persons willing to engage in hazardous speculations, or to make investments which could not for many years yield an adequate return. This fatal facility of obtaining borrowed money was greatly increased by the establishment of new banking companies, with large capitals (some of them furnished from England), which could only be employed in the discounting of bills. The abundance of money thus created, caused a rapid rise to take place in almost every species of colonial property; and in the delusive hope that this rise would continue to be a progressive one, numbers were led to their ruin."

If

Sir George himself thought it would be a progressive one. he thought otherwise, he was fatally negligent of the best interests of the community under his charge; when he could have stopped the mania at once, in its very first stage, by pointing out to the land monopolists the ample means possessed by himself for making that kind of property cheap enough. He only needed to have shown a disposition to check any kind of feverish longing in that way, and the utmost cautiousness would have followed, and serenity to the tone of the money-pulse. But to have referred the land merchants to anything like a map of unsold crown lands: to have impressed upon their minds, however faintly, the boundlessness of the saleable acres, would have proved zero to the summer jollity of the land revenue.

Sir George wished to realise as large a sum as possible from the crown lands, and Lord John Russell a still larger. His Excellency evinced the will to keep pace with the public excitement, and to get as much for the public lands as they would bring; never for a moment considering that he was fostering a condition of things dangerous to the equable advancement and prosperity of the colony, and which has since been followed by so grievous a re-action-a re-action caused by stimulating the public appetite, and overstraining the monied capability of the community.

Then the home government had El Dorado utilitarian dreams of still larger masses of gold to be worked out of the land revenue; dreams from which it awoke, aware that the ruin of a province, the united work of its governments, home and local, was a poor basis for the confidence of future capitalists, a poor incentive to it; and not exactly the condition of things out of which healthful and ample land funds are to be realised.

The discovery of Australia Felix opened a large field for speculation; the dribbling manner in which it was sold created the appetite (mania, if you please); the banks aided the rage by multiplying money, the means for purchase; Sir George allowed plenty of time betwixt the sales for the land hunger to grow, it was so delightful to be able to send large sums to England! then Lord John Russell ruined all. By making land cheap in the colony he hoped it would sell immensely; by enlarging the frog to the size of the ox, it burst; inordinate desires to raise outrageous land revenues to be enabled thereby to rid the old country of its supernumerary people, proved at once an extinguisher to the former settlers, to colonists generally, and to the land-fund equally.

What is the condition of our agricultural people? Miserably

ruinous. Not only have they to compete with the penal colonies; with those privileged communities who outstrip them, having cheaper labour; there is a privileged class in our own colony also, with whom it is less possible to compete. The cost of marine transmission is a partial protection against the former, but against the latter there is none. I allude to the cultivators of squatting stations. As though the farmer's other disadvantages were not in themselves sufficient, it was reserved for our local government, in its wisdom, to permit, at their very doors, this additional enormity.

For instance, before me, and in clear prospect, are two locations one of them, forty acres, is let* for 807. per annum, having only 220 yards of river frontage; consequently, possessing only a few acres of alluvial soil. The other, only divided from it by the river, has several miles of such frontage, abundance of the richest cultivable soil, with sufficient back-run for herds of cattle, for sheep, &c.; and for this the squatter pays 107. per annum. The first location, purchased from the crown for 4407. furnished that sum for immigration purposes; the other has furnished nothing, yet participates in the advantage of labour thus procured, equally. Thus the purchaser of land is made instrumental in his own ruin.

It will be evident how unjust is the present system; and how next to worthless, how unletable, and unsaleable, landed property must be.

Instead of fresh locations being brought into cultivation, much that is already so must relapse into the wilderness, whilst the richest portions of the wilderness can be cultivated so unreservedly and so cheap.

If it was intended by Lord John Russell, and by Sir George Gipps following in his track, to betray and ruin all who, putting faith in them, had made investments in colonial land -and the land fund also, they have acted well to that end.

It was once expected by the landed proprietor and the farmer, that if the squatters were permitted to raise farm produce otherwise than for their own consumption, they would be placed on a more rational equality with the agricultural community generally by a higher rental. Notice was given to them to that effect then again abandoned, and the old, unequal, and unjust system is continued.

In England, how many and various are the sources of profit to the farmer. Here sheep and cattle, there most lucrative,

The rent was never paid.

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