The Express.
London, England, 1847-11-13 00:00:00

A VOICE FROM AUSTRALIA.

We take the following extracts from an unpublished
pamphlet, entitled, " A Voice from the far Interior of Aus-
tralia," by a Bushman.
On the subject of emigration the author remarks :
" Many plans have been propounded for encouraging emi-
gration—no one can be devised which will suit all our
eolonies. The system which would suit Canada would no
more suit Australia, than the cultivation good for goose-
berries would grow crapes. Canada I leave to Lord Elgin
and Mr. Godley. New Zealand is provided for by the vic-
torious New Zealand Company. South Australia is mad
upon copper mines. Swan River, under a Hutt, peacefully
pursues the even tenor of its way. New South Wales is the
pet of no one, indeed it seems the enfant daninj of our
colonies, and yet, of all those lying in the southern seas,
none offers fairer prospects of ample returns to the colonist
and the mother country, if justly dealt with, and wisely
governed."
Of Sidney and New South Wales, the Bushman remarks :
" Sydney is a sort of Liverpool or New Orleans, to which
the squatters send their wool and fat beasts, and from which
they buy their tea, sugar, tobacco, and slops. After starving
for ten or twenty months on salt beef and damper, and tea
without milk, often without sugar, the bushman goes down
to Sydney to spend, like an ass, in a month's revelry, money
he has worked for like a horse, or say a bullock. The
people of Sydney who furnish informstion for parliamentary
petitions, debates, and acts of parliament, know no more
about our interests, pursuits, wants, and wishes, than the
people of London. They are often as much opposed in
politics (local) and prejudices, as country gentlemen to cot-
ton-spinners. We are the manufacturers, they are the
brokers. We look on them as cockney usurers, they look
on us as semi-savages. I have heard Sydney merchants of
high standing, possessing large mortgage interests in grazing
stock, talk about the bush not half so sensibly as Bailie
Nicol Jarvie did about the Highlands, before his first and
last visit to Rob Roy's land.
" New South Wales cannot flourish without an ample
supply of labour; and two circumstances have contributed
to deprive the colony of the supply which enabled it, in Ices
than a quarter of a century, to become the greatest wool-
growing country in the world; 'which enabled it to create
an entirely new trade, and, from the fine quality of the wools,
an entirely new description of manufacture. The one was
the abolition of the assignment system; the other, the de-
struction of the emigration fund, by raising the price of land ,
to 11. per acre. The effect of the assignment system on the
colony and on convicts 1 will presently discuss. As to raising
the twice of land, no one would, and no one will, buy land
in New South Wales, where thousands of acres are not worth i
sixpence a year, at 11. an acre, unless in very choice situa-
tions, and for limited portions. In fact, since the change,
land sales have ceased. Before this enhancement of price I
took place, there was a large fund available for the imports- ,
Lion of labourers, after paying a considerable proportion of
the police expenses of the colony. The 11. an acre system ,
' was invented by, or borrowed from, Mr. Gibbon Wakefield,
who argues that it is of no consequence what &colonist pays for
land, if the major part of the purchase-money is laid out in
importing labour and effecting internal improvements, such
as roads, bridges, Ate. But then Mr. Wakefield's theory
tends toward the concentration of population in a narrow
circle, anal toward' a clear division of settlers into labourers
at wages, and landowners of capital. In fact, a neat sym-
metrical and aristocratic system. Now, I do not mean to say
that this system may not work extremely well in agricul-
tural countries, running in a narrow belt along the seacoast,
like New Zealand, where the land is rich enough to support
la dense population, and the territory is by nature confined
within such narrow bounds, that the effect of an importation
of labour will be immediately felt on the wages of the colony.
But New South \Vales is a pastoral country, where millions
of acres are birren, and millions are valueless for want
lof water. Isolation is the essence of a pastoral life; even
the servants of the patriarchs quarrelled, and com-
pelled them to separate. A good bushman lives in
the centre of a run, perhaps ten miles square. If you con-
centrate our population, you destroy our trade ; we might
manage to exist, but we should cease to export—and what
would Yorkshire and all the patent paletot makers say ?
"The hope of obtaining a there of a cargo of emigrants,
to be landed in Sydney, 300 miles from his station, would
never induce a !quitter to give it. an acre for land not worth
se. In fact, the system of demanding 11. an acre for a block
of at least 640 acres, has put an end to land sales and the
emigration fund—has discouraged agriculture in those parts
of the colony where a permanent supply of grain was most
wanted, and has left no investment open for small capital
except stock—thus encouraging the wandering habits of the
people, for who would venture to farm efficiently on an ma-
nual bush-grazing license ? To attempt to compress a popu.
lation—a population within eight of millions of acres of rich
pasture land—in order to carry out a geometrical and sym-
metrical theory of division, may end in destroying the loyalty
of the colon"; but you can no more change shepherds and
herdsmen into citizens and gardeners, than you can turn
wandering Arabs into weavers and drapers.
" The best thing that our legislators can do for New South
Wales is, to encourage the tillage of land suitable for the
plough, whether in large lots or in small, and to attract
labour from those countries where it is a drug to us where
it is at a premium.
" New South Wales is not Rutlandsbire. Legislators
must dismiss from their minds all European notions of
spaee and land value, and remember that every
rod of land cultivated in the wilderness is a link added on to
the chain of civilisation. Men of large capital are the best
wool growers, but men of small capital make the best bush
farmers. They begin by growing enough to feed themselves,
and they end by feeding their neighbours, whose live stock
gives them no time for sowing and reaping.
" The men who would be most likely to purchase land
hundreds of miles in the interior, and, there settling, turn
deserts of natural pasture into oases of grain, cannot afford
to sink 11. an acre for a section. The capital proposed to be
locked up in the government chest, would produce a hundred
fold more to the government and the colony if allowed to
fructify under the hard hands of the settlers. With the
crown lands saleable at their real value, and in lots to suit
little men as well as great men, the emigration fund would
be swelled by the purchases of small farmers who cannot
make a living in England."
" Emigrant labourers," says the author, "are worse than
useless, unless they have been accustomed to labour for
hire. The sweepings of English workhouses and Irish
beggars, who have never eaten a good meal or dens a day's
work in their lives, grow fat and saucy as soon as they
exchange their rags and potatoes, or parish uniform and
pariah allowance, for our fine climate and bush fare.. 1
" I would much sooner have a stunted Spitalfields weaver
than one of either of the above description.
" Among the reforms most needed in the colony, is a con-
cise code of master and servant law. Nine-tenths of the
time of the magistrates are taken up with the disputes of
masters and servants. Each justice decides according to his
fancy, and the result is great injustice and perpetual heart-
beuerneiormer Wt
grievouslyithint oppressed.
eboundartee,
ilabrri the n
bush, gmenarfro-
ri timasters
are almost entirely at the merry of their free servants. On
the other hand, I have known instances in which maters
have cheated their men by bad orders and unfair compulsory
barter; but the man in the bush who ill uses his servants
seldom prospers; his character soon becomes known, and he
suffers losses in sheep and cattle that never occur to upright
men. Bushranging by prisoners, has in almost every in-
stance been occasioned by cruel, unjust masters.
" The built servant receives high wages, which often ac-
cumulate, from want of means of spending them, until they
amount to from 50/. to 2001. This money, if waste lands
were sold as they are in the United States, would, in many
instances, be expended in the purchase of say from five to
fifty acres. On this land a hut might be built, and corn and
vegetables grown ; a wife would be wanted, and, if possible,
obtained, and a wandering vagabond would settle down into
the permanent servant of the district. As it is, servants
have no means of investment, and no tie to induce them to
settle in one place, so they are always spending their wages
and wandering about. Savings-banks do not exist. The
nearest shop is a grog shop, and after toiling for months or
years, the fruits of praiseworthy industry are dissipated in a
drunken debauch. I have known many instances of labour-
ing men starting to go to Sydney, and even to England, with
savings amounting to some hundred poanda, and spending
every farthing at the first public-house on the road.

• The weekly allowance of a servant in the bush im 1016•, o 1 don;
lobs. balm mutton, lila. logy, 410. tea, and ilk, tobaccos

" In the next place, it is almost impoirible for either e
bush servant or master to get married. There are scarcely soy
women in the interior, and no clergymen. If a stockman er
shepherd is so fortunate so to meet with • girl willing to
have him, be must make a long journey into the settled die.
tracts, and there sojourn three weeks for banns, or go to the
expense of a license—a most unreasonable demand upontke
time and money of people in that situation of life. I myself
knew an instance iu which astockman went down to Bathurst,
with a girl and her mother, to get married ; but when they
found that it would require three weeks to complete the
ceremony, by mutual consent they dispensed with it, cekt_
heated the event by a carouse at a public-house, and re.
tumed at once, saying to their friends and ntigh.ootia
within seventy miles, that they were married."
Tie miserable paucity of the fair sex throughout the whole
of the interior of the colony is illustrated in a single in.
stance

" On the Barwen, both sidci of the river were settled to,
300 miles, and there wu not one white wunnui in the whet.
distance !" .

The present allotment 'Totem is thus treated of
0 The symmetrical system of advancing regularly from the
boundaries of the settled districts, by general surreys or
special surveys, and plotting out the ground in sections of
not less than 6:10 acres, acts as a moat injurious clog upon
the progress of settlement and cultivation. A country such
so I have described cannot be parcelled out like labourers'
allotments in an English parish ; and, besides, the smallest
lot requires a much larger capital to be sunk than most ensi.
grants of the farmer class pos•ets.
" For the settler, compelled to pay 6401. for his section,
must have rations to live on for at least seven months before
he can possibly get a crop off the ground, or in any way ham
any return (or his money ; and, if he brings only fifty schm
into cultivation, unless he has three grown sons able to assist
him, the labour for fencing, clearing, putting up a slabbed,
barn, and milking yard will coat at least 200!. Tu do this
work will require a dray and team of bullocks, w,rth ersj at
present prices—mine cost me 1001. And hr ought to imee
few horses and cows. In fact, a 1111111 mutt hose some emu;
derable colonial experience to make 1,0001. do.
" The man with from 3,0001. to 5,000/. will generally stay
at home. The man with 5001. will be more likely to be eons
tent to settle ia a fertile wilderness, in order to live without
trouble from tax-gatherers or tradesmen's accounts, bringing
up a large family, knowing that they will never feel want,
and trusting that his posterity will derive a moue) 'mkt*
from the labour bestowed on hie farm.

" The I!. an acre system would never have been adopted,
er if adopted it would have been speedily abandoned, if it
had not been introduced at a time when the public was as
mad upon the subject of emigration as they were the other
day on the subject of railroads. In 1815.6, the French go-
vernment found no difficulty in inducing merchants who
ought to have known better to accept railway concessions on
terms which have since proved ruinous; so during the emi-
gration mania there were people mad enough to give any
price for land in any South-Sea colony,—early juggled by
the idea of obtaining labour exported with the purchase-
money, and partly deceived by thinking of the for-centuncs-
tilled farms of England. Then there were ceitain prisons;
like poor Sir George Gipps, who fancied that the wild lands
of Australia were a precious heritage, to be preserved, bare
and unproductive, like building land, until some enormous
theoretical price was reached for the benefit of the public tree-
!wry. Now without entering into the abstract question, which
was once before so keenly debated on the other side of the
Atlantic, and which ended in turning our American colonies
into the United States—of whether the wild lands of a
colony ought not rather to be administered fur the benefit of
the colonists than of the Imperial state, I would be con-
tent with urging on our legislature, and especially on the
crowd of old consistent and new inconsistent frcc•traden,
who have lately been elected to represent us in the C,m
mons' House of Britain—that making the colonists prosper-
ous is the best mode of rendering the colonies profitable.
That a farmer, or grazier, or fiockmaster, settled in New
South Wales, getting bis Indiana and his calicoes, his blankets
and his hardware, his tea, his sugar, and tobacco from Eng-
land, or through English ships, confers more direct benefit
on the mother-country than any number of shillings or

pounds conveyed into the treasury of the office for the sale
of crown-lands.

"The tiTo7i of dividing colonists into masters and servants,
by fixing land at so high a price, and dividing It into such
large lots, that no man with less than 1,0001. can become a
landowner, is not only extremely unjust to the labouring
classes, but has in practice totally failed in producing its
promised effect. It can be proved that it has worked in a
vicious circle.

" In the first place, it has prevented the sale of land, espe-
cially in the far interior, where it is moat desirable that per-
manent settlements should be formed in every fertile spot.
Secondly—By damming up the land fund, it his put an end
to the importation of tree labourers. Thirdly—it has die-
couragad the immigration and settlement of the best class
of immigrants, viz., those of small capital and rural expe-
rience. Fourthly—lt has debarred the best labourers of one
of the moat %useful investments for savings. Fifthly, and
lastly—By all these discouragement, on the one hand, the
wages of labour have been raised to an amount which ren-
ders wool-growing and agriculture unprofitable; while on
the other, the sources from which supplies of labour might
have been obtained, have been dried up.
" There was a time when squatters had the means of
realising enormous fortunes. Land was then granted with-
out cost in unlimited quantities. An ample supply of con-
vict labour was to be had without wages. Wool bore a
high price in the European market ; and grazing ground',
now thickly settled, were nearer to port and market by some
hundred miles, than the best grazing runs of the present
day. The expenses of the squatter were in every respect
less, while the price of his produce was greater by 150 per
car e.• As the country becomes more and more thickly set-
tled, sheep and cattle are driven further into the interior.
Every mile additional from a port of shipment, is an addi-
tional expense to the squatter, for the conveyance of produce
sold and of provisions purchased.
" Then, again, persons accustomed to the European value
of land, to rents at from 255. to 50‘. an acre, not considering
that the chief value of such land depends on cheap labour,
roads, and
i ready markets, jump to the conclusion that the
rent and taxesimposed upon a squatter are almost tanta-
mount to a gratuitous lease of the land he occupies. The
acts according to the present law are all the other way.
" With favourable seasons, a fair supply of labour,'n steady
price of wool and stock, a good average grazing run, lulus-
try, common sense, and good luck, squatters may do well
in New South Wales, and even make fortunes ; but they
must earn hardly and anxiously every penny they get ; and
they pay full value for all that government permits them to
tak-. At present the grazing runs which government has
at its disposal are all situated at least 500 miles from Sydney,
the only real market for wool or stock in any quantity.
" Now the main expense of a squatter,—an expense equal
to a high rent—lies in being' compelled to draw all that be
and his men require from a great distance (generally from
Sydney), in bullock drays, over a country where the ways
are for the most part in a state of nature. These ways, on
level ground and in dry weather, are tolerable cart tracks,
such to may be met with on the moors of England and Scot*
land; but in • journey of 400 miles every variety of country
is traversed, sometimes deep gullies intersect your path, into
which the dray must descend, and then be drawn up an al-
most perpendicular bank on the opposite aide, by the main
force of the oxen, where horses would break their backs.
Some of these ravines are so difficult that bullock-drivers
are in the habit of waiting for other teams, in order to twist
each other, by making a joint stock of their draught power.
Sometimes swamps lie in the way, through which the dray
must either be dragged, unless it be avoided by a long cir-
cuit. Sometimes falling timber intercepts the path in a
dense impassable scrub ; and sometimes the road is so
tenacious that the wheels are clogged up with mud and
grass to the (aloes. Over such a country, halts at ricers in
time of flood, broken poles and wheels, and the necessity of
frequently unloading to get through swamps, so delay us,
that, in long jourueys, we consider twelve miles through
the bush a good day's work ; and in bad weather we cannot
do more than three or four.

" It is therefore more economical for a squatter to have
two or three drays on the road at the same time, if his esta-
blishment is on sufficiently large a sale to load them ; for
although one dray takes two men, two men can manage two
drays, and three men three drays. Now each man's wages
and rations cast from 401. to 601. a year. In the present
dearth of labour good bullock.drivers are getting 501. and
their rations. Bullock-driving in the bush being almost a
science, we say, 'any man can knock bullocks about, but
very few can drive them.' "
The convict system next occupies the Bushman's at-
tention :
" The labouring classes in New South Wales are opposed
to the renewal of the assignment system, and have dexter-
ously availed themselves of the cry of ' morality,' a cry
which is re-echoed by ignorant well-meaning people at
I home, while the truth is, that it is not an influx of crime
11 that the Australian labourers fear, but an interference with
the monopoly of labour: they are equally opposed to immi-
gration, and would put a atop to teat too, if they had any
plausible excise. The feeling is natural,:; and if you con-
sulted the labourers of Liverpool, they would cline that port
to the swarms of Irish who annually flock into England,
and reduce the price of hard unskilled work. I do not
blame them for their petition against a renewal of the as-
signment system ; I agree with them in not wishing to see it
renewed in towns ; but the moral objection to convict
labour, stated in a petition presented to parliament by Mr.T.
Buncombe, in last session, was merely a piece of cant got
up to suit the English philanthropic and parliamentary
market.
" I have had, at different times, some hundred assigned
servants and ticket-odleave-men in my service, as a squatter
in the bush, and my experience assures me that the best
way of reforming a criminal, if he has any good left in him,
is to remove him from all his old associations, keep him apart
from any number of his own class, give him plenty of em-
ployment; ensure him, on the one hand, an improved posi-
tion and eventual liberty, it well conducted ; and, on the
other, severe and summary punishment, if guilty of any
serious offence. Now, these are principles which lave been
partly, and may be most easily, carried into practice in the
Intoner of New South Wales.
"Ifs boy or man in England, however unexceptionable
his natural disposition and previous conduct, be guilty of one
crime, whether under the influence of poverty, drunkenness,
love of forbidden field-sports, or one of those incomprehen-
sible temptations which our fathers not unwisely attributed
to the direct agency of the devil, if he once be defiled by the
hands of a constable, and pass through the avenging portals
of a gaol, he may bid farewell to all hopesof an honest living
within gossip-shot of the locality of his offence. He may
leave the prison a wiser and a better man, well taught in re-
liions truths, of which he was before ignorant, perhaps
gifted witha new trade, but no one will have anything to do
with him. In a country where competition for work is so
keen that the best characters can barely get constant occu-
pation at remunerative wages a man with a blotted character
has no chance at all. If he has strong arms and strong

• wool woo worth 2a 114 per lb., whkh now ke net worth mom
than from IRAQ Is. 3d. per lb.

Pr"'

'nog. he may get work on railroads ; but prison fare and
silent quiet sedentary pursuit.. are a bad preparation for a
and .t life; so he walks
oforth, with hunger in his belly
and p.verty in hie pockets see wealth in every window,
and welcome at no door, unless it be at those dens where
wren hee like himself sell and spend the produce of their
felonies."
"Nothing could be better than the principle of the old
system of assignment and ticket-ofleave, to ensure uniform
rod conduct. Under that system, each prisoner, if well
conducted, after so many years of arignment—that is, labour
without wages for clothing and food, if well conducted
during that term—received a ticket-of-leave, which enabled
him to hire himself to whomsoever he pleased, within a
tert,ii, district for wages. If that ticket was not forfeited by
inirceinluet at the end of a certain other period, the prisoner
obtained complete iiii;,rt:r within the colony. These regula-
tions were carried into practice in leww.e• unequal, and
arbitrary manner, but they were founded on common send
and c..mmon justice. Under them thousands, who in Eng•
land o ,ulti have been the regular clients of magistrates and
gaol. • became free, independent, and respectable. In the
assirtocent system. the foundation of the prosperity of the
colons was laid. 1 would have an assignment and ticket-of.
leave ss stem carefully digested. I would make assignment
a pri• it. ge afforded to criminals of superior conduct and
char.., ter. No assigned servants should be allowed in any
town. .r within 2.5 miles of any town. No grog shopkeeper
should be allowed an assigned servant. No master should
be allowed more than a limited number. Under the old
'lvan on some farms there were a hundred congregated to
rther. teaching and desiring all sorts of wickedness."

BRAZIL

Sir.—l am led to make a few observations, from
perceissng that the obnoxious act of the 9.1 August, 1841
(to wt„ h you allude), so galling to the Brazilian govern-
ment ond people, and derogatory to its monarch, instead of
being revoked or allowed to remain a dead letter, is actually
being put in force; for it was very recently announced that
the crew of a Brazilian vessel. suspected of being engaged in '
the slivo trade, had been detained and brought to this
port ; and on Thursday last a case was brought before the
Admir ilty Court, of another Brazilian vessel said to have
landed scarzo of slaves on the coast of the empire, and to have
been set fire to, was captured within the precincts of the
empire. and brought to this country for adjudication in our
coons. These proceedings are the more extraordinary,
since the present Chief Justice of the Common Pleas (no tn-
con.iilrible authority) and the Vice-President of the Board
of Trad,. at the time both condemned the act, as militating
against the right of nations, and opposed to all international
law.
It is • i be hoped, consequently, that in the approaching
aessiot. her Majesty's government will freely and voluntarily
repeal the said statute, or be induced to do so by the re-
monstronces and memorials of our merchants, manufacturers,
and ship-owners concerned in the trade of that country, of
which we at present enjoy so large a proportion, as proved
. by Mr, 111• Gregor's " Commercial Tariffs," part the '2lst,
presen•ed to the House of Commons in May last, a careful
peruse; of which I would strongly recommend to all the
members of that house, particularly those who, from
not having had a seat ia it last session, may
not hove had an opportunity of looking into that
valuable compilation. They will thereby be made fully
aware of the importance of our commercial transactions
with foe rich and prolific country, and easel iced of
the fob v of ruining or deteriorating them, from mistaken
zeal or •Iliberal motives.
, Therc is another object which will deserves the attention
I, of the legislature, and it is desirable that some member
ghoul.: ((Ting it under its consideration, namely, the very im-
,
' perfect .ind inadequate means employed by the Post-orricel
for the conveyance of the mercantile correspondence
l between this country and the Brazil., and, through
Brazil, with the Oriental. Argentine, and nearly all
the other republics of South America, particularly
( at the present moment,, when the commercial intercourse
I with th.• countries in the river Plate is exposed to interrup-
tion, and almost threatened with annihilation. The last
mail from those states and the empire of Brazil arrived here
on the 23rd of last month, and no other is expected to arrive
between this and Christmas-eye! Hoping this may meet
the eve and attract the attention of some member of the
House of Commons, who has the commercial prosperity of
his country at heart. such as Mr. M'Gregor, Mr. Ewart, Dr.
Bowrine, ilke., I shall be proud of having been the means of
binrii.:g closer the relations between Great Britain and
Braz:l. ••y the repeal of an act so offensive to the one and in-
jurious to the other.—Ax Ateol.o-Bnaztualt DlEgefiaNT.