from Cape Howe to Moreton Bay, found their way through vast plains, in a southwest direction, toward Encounter Bay, or were lost by evaporation and absorption before they could penetrate to the shore. It was also proved, that those plains were by no means fertile, were ill-suited to tillage, were wanting in water, and during any season of drought, — and it was terribly apparent that droughts lasting through years might be looked for,—would be uninhabitable. The rivers were mountain streams, rising in a moment, inundating every thing, laying vast tracts under water; then passing away, and giving place to sand, and dust, and desolation. Our western rivers are changeable enough; the Ohio rises in its flood from sixty-five to seventy feet; at one season, it is a torrent often a mile in width, and fit to bear navies; at another, it creeps along, a little "creek" that a man may ford on horseback, and travellers upon the bank, (we speak literal truth,) are annoyed and blinded by the sharp dust which drives from the bed of the river. But the Ohio is unchangeable compared with the streams of Australia. The Hawkesworth, back of Sydney, rises ninety feet above low water. The Macquarie is alternately deep enough to bear a line-of-battle ship upon its bosom, and so shallow that the fishes and frogs cannot live in it. One month, it is the Hudson in its strength and volume, and the next, a "dry-run." To-day, you may faint upon its banks from thirst, because between them all is waterless; and to-night, be wakened by a distant roar of crashing logs and breaking tree-tops, and hurrying out may find a moving cataract, tossing the spoil of the forest before it, and filling the bed of the river in a moment with a torrent that you cannot pass.

*

Among such streams and with such a soil, in which, during dry weather, a horse will sink above his fetlock at every step, tillage cannot flourish. It is a land for flocks and herds, which can journey to and fro with the change of seasons; much of it is almost valueless. In 1843, Sir Thomas Mitchell stated before the legislative council, that in his belief, of about eighteen million of acres as yet not granted within the colony of New South Wales, five sevenths were

*See Sturt. II 64, 65, &c.

† Much may be done for Australia by systematic irrigation. See some suggestions by Strzelecki, p. 443, &c.

not worth sixpence an acre. So scant is the vegetation that from ten to twenty acres are allowed as grazing ground to a bullock, and from three to seven for a sheep.*

The investigations by Sturt, therefore, while they served to clear away the cloud which hung over the geography of Australia's southeastern corner, and gave an intelligible character to the rivers of that region, added nothing to the hopes of the colonists, gave no stimulus to speculation, and caused no mass of emigrants to divert their course from America to New Holland. And yet the Captain spoke hopefully and strongly † of the lands which lie upon the lower banks of the Murray, and between that stream and St. Vincent's Gulf, and recommended there the formation of an emigrant colony.

But although the Captain's discoveries immediately, and at once, caused no emigration to the regions he had passed through and near, indirectly they were connected with one of the four chief colonies of New Holland, that of South Australia; and as the principles upon which that colony was based were promulgated in the same year in which Sturt discovered the Murray, and as, besides, the steps for settling Swan River in the west were commenced in that same eventful twelvemonth, 1829, we think it but fair to leave our geographical problem here for a while, and turn to the social inquiries, which, as we have intimated, were more or less clearly presenting themselves to the English world during the rule of Lachlan Macquarie.

Those problems were,

1. Ought any future settlements in Australia to be composed, in whole or part, of criminals?

2. How ought the criminals sent to New South Wales, or elsewhere, to be employed?

3. Should lands be granted or sold? If sold, in what manner, and at what price?

4. Is it desirable to concentrate the settlements, and if so, how can it be done?

These topics, mixed up with a vast amount of what was

* See statements in Douglas Jerrold's newspaper of September 30th, 1848, p. 1268. Strzelecki, 459, 370.

↑ Too strongly; he makes a space of fifty-five miles by seventy-five contain seven million acres! See vol. ii. p. 247. It should have been 2,640,000.

merely personal and political, were brought prominently before the people of England by the accusations which the Hon. H. Grey Bennet brought against Governor Macquarie ; by the appointment of a Commissioner to visit New South Wales, and by the report of that functionary, Mr. Bigge, made in 1822.

In regard to the problem of future colonies, the effect of Australian experience upon the best minds at home was decidedly adverse to mingling convicts with free settlers. Immorality, social aristocracy, bad culture, and unequal profits, were but a few of the evils which were believed to flow from the system that had been pursued at Sydney. All future colonies, it was thought, ought to be merely penal settlements, larger prisons, or should be free from the taint of the dungeon and the gallows. The settlers of New South Wales, it is true, and those of Tasmania at a later period, found convict labor cheap and profitable; but even at that early day, the mischiefs which have since, for years at a time, put a stop to transportation were discerned by the keen-sighted.*

The second problem, how to employ the convicts sent to Botany Bay and its dependencies, was less easily answered. If Government employed them, as Macquarie had done, on public works, a vast expense followed. If they were "assigned" to individuals, that is, made over as a sort of white slaves, after the old fashion † which had been pursued in America in early days, though the master made money, and though the convict, if well-behaved, gained great privileges, yet the popular mind of England was likely to become displeased with this sort of servitude in those Wilberforcean times. And if the convict were set free, was it not saying to the honest man in Great Britain, "you must pay for a passage to our Australian empire;" and to the rogue," you shall go there for nothing?" Where was a fourth course to be discovered?

Up to the close of Macquarie's rule, the Government had been the chief employer; free settlers were scarce, and the emancipists were poor and clung to the towns. After his time, the "assignment" system gained in favor for a while, both

*

e. g. Sydney Smith, Dr. Whateley, Bentham, and Bennet named above. † See Bancroft, I. 187--8. Macauley's England, I. 602--3, (Harper's large edition.)

at home and abroad, and New South Wales grew rich and wicked; then it was denounced in Great Britain; in 1838, a committee of Parliament advised its discontinuance; and in 1840, it was abandoned. Sir Robert Peel and Lord Stanley, having come into power, next commenced (in 1843) an experiment in Van Diemen's land, which collected the convicts, who were no longer sent to Sydney, into gangs under the superintendence of public officers; this was the "probation" system.* It was found, however, worse, more demoralizing, and far more depopulating in its results, than even its enemies had foretold. One twentieth of the free population of Tasmania left it in six months; thefts and robberies by the Bushrangers, the escaped convicts, and those whose time was out, prevailed to an extent that made all men fear for life and property each hour of the day and night ;† vices which Sodom would have blushed at were as common as the gangs were numerous; and from 5,500 to 12,000 men were stationed, in bodies of 200 and 300, from Southport, all up through the interior, to the waters of the Mersey in the north. This system, therefore, had in its turn to be modified and further transportation to Tasmania abandoned; and again the problem came back, what shall we do with our transported convicts? At present, if we are rightly informed,‡ they all go through a course of punishment and discipline in England to begin with, and then, as "exiles," with "tickets of leave," which make them in substance freemen within specified limits and during good behavior, go to the colony appointed; they can choose their own masters, make their own bargains, and while they keep within bounds and conduct properly, are like any other good citizens; if they stray or misbehave, a summary proceeding by any magistrate may bring them to their marrow-bones. Such is the present halfsolution, for it is no more, of the second problem we have stated.

* A full account of this system is in the Edinburgh Review, for July, 1847, page 132. American Edition.

† Crimes were from six to eight times as numerous as in England.

Our latest information is through the article in the Edinburgh Review of July last.

The whole subject of transportation is just now in a state of transition; what will be done no one knows.

The third, as to the sale of lands, has proved even yet harder to deal with; in that early day, however, it attracted comparatively little attention. When land was plenty and free emigrants scarce, the royal representatives found it convenient for all parties to make liberal gifts of His Majesty's Australian territory, and accordingly, tracts varying in size from ten thousand acres to fifty thousand were granted to various individuals upon condition that they would employ a certain number of convicts. But in 1829 commenced a movement which was destined to change all this system of gratuities, and substitute in its place one phase or other of "the Wakefield."

Mr. Wakefield's theory of colonization, if we comprehend it aright, was substantially as follows: The welfare of any community depends very much upon such a division of labor as shall fill every trade, profession, and employment with good men, and not overload any of them. If land in any country is so cheap that all are able to become freeholders, there will be no laborers, no farm-hands, or mechanics; a semi-barbarism will follow; no growth in wealth or civilization will take place, and the country will be stationary or retrograde. If, therefore, you would have a colony progressive and civilized, you must put your lands so high as to keep a proper proportion of the inhabitants in the labor-market seeking employment, and yet not so high as to prevent as many from buying real estate as can use it to advantage with the help of such laborers. But still further, your colony cannot be supplied with laborers, especially if far from home, unless they are carried there free of expense, or with but little expense, to themselves. then, England wishes Australia to grow in riches and goodness, let her, instead of giving lands to all who will employ a few convicts, sell them at a fixed price, never taking less, and in fixed quantities, never selling less; and let her apply the revenue arising from these sales to the transportation of free, honest laborers to the points where they are needed. In this way, the labor-market of New Holland will be supplied; the expense of supplying working hands will be paid by the lands of the colony; no more land will be taken up than can be worked to advantage; population will be concentrated; wealth accumulate; knowledge and virtue advance; and the millennium begin to dawn for this unhappy world of the antipodes,

If