Читать книгу: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 401, November 28, 1829», страница 5

THE SELECTOR and LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS

EMIGRATION TO NEW SOUTH WALES

People who are accustomed to sit half the day with their hands folded, over a bright November fire, talking of hard times and other standing grievances, will do well to read "A Letter from Sydney, the principal town of Australasia, edited by Robert Ganger;" and study an annexed system of colonization as a remedy for their distress. The Letter is written by a plain-sailing, plain-dealing man of the world, and though on a foreign topic, is in a homely style. We are therefore persuaded that a few extracts will be useful to the above class of thinkers and readers, as well as to others who do not, like the great man of antiquity, sigh for new worlds.

Climate and Soil

All that you read in the works of Wentworth and Cunningham, as to the healthfulness and beauty of the climate, is strictly true. There are scarcely any diseases but what result immediately from intemperance. Dropsy, palsy, and the whole train of nervous complaints, are common enough; but then, drunkenness is the vice par excellence of the lower orders; and the better class of settlers have not learned those habits of temperance which are suited to the climate of Naples. The two classes often remind me of English squires and their grooms, as I used to see them at Florence, just after the peace; masters drinking at dinner, because they were abroad, and after dinner because they were Englishmen; the servants drinking always, because wine and brandy were cheap. Perhaps a generation must pass away before the people here will accommodate their habits to the climate, which is that of Italy, without either malaria or the sirocco.

The soil of New South Wales is not particularly fertile. The plains of the Granges, and of the great rivers of China, the lowlands of the West India islands, the swamps of the Gulf of Mexico, and even the marshes of Essex, produce crops of which the people here have no conception; but then, as we are without great masses of alluvial deposit, so are agues and intermittent fevers absolutely unknown. In point of natural fertility, I am inclined to compare this soil to that of France; and I have no doubt that, if the same quantity of agricultural labour as is employed in France, were here bestowed upon an area equal to the French territory, the quantity of produce would fully equal that of France. Timber, coal, iron, and other useful minerals, abound; the harbours and rivers teem with fish; cattle of all sorts thrive and multiply with astonishing rapidity; every fruit that flourishes in Spain and Italy comes to the highest perfection; and Nature fully performs her part in bestowing upon man the necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of life.

Value of Land, &c

I was told that an estate of 10,000 acres might be obtained for a mere trifle. This was true. I have got 20,000 acres, and they did not cost me more than 2s. per acre. But I imagined that a domain of that extent would be very valuable. In this I was wholly mistaken. As my estate cost me next to nothing, so it is worth next to nothing. It is a noble property to look at; and "20,000 acres in a ring fence," sounds very well in England; but here, such a property possesses no exchangeable value. The reason is plain: there are millions upon millions of acres, as fertile as mine, to be had for nothing; and, what is more, there are not people to take them. Of my 20,000 acres I reckon about 5,000 to be woodland, though, indeed, there are trees scattered over the whole property, as in an English park. For my amusement, I had a rough estimate made of the money that I could obtain for all this timber, were it growing in any part of England. The valuation amounts to above £150,000.

Building

Having fortune enough for all my wants, I proposed to get a large domain, to build a good house, to keep enough land in my own hands for pleasure-grounds, park, and game preserves; and to let the rest, after erecting farm-houses in the most suitable spots. My mansion, park, preserves, and tenants, were all a mere dream. I have not one of them. When, upon my first arrival, I talked of these things to some sensible men, to whom I was recommended, they laughed in my face. I soon found that a house would, though the stone and timber were to be had for nothing, cost three times as much as in England. This was on account of the very high wages required by mechanics; but this was not all. None of the materials of a house, except stone and timber, are produced in the colony. Every pane of glass, every nail, every grain of paint, and every piece of furniture, from the kitchen copper to the drawing-room curtains, must have come from England. My property is at a distance of nearly seventy miles from the sea, and there is no road, but a track through the forest, for two-thirds of that distance. The whole colony did not contain as many masons, carpenters, glaziers, painters, black and whitesmiths, and other mechanics, as I should have required. Of course, I soon abandoned all thought of building a mansion. As for a park, my whole property was a park, and a preserve for kangaroos and emus.

A friend of ours, a free emigrant, has more than once facetiously wished for our company in the colony; but judging from the following, we had rather "let well alone," and stay at home, than play the schoolmaster or march-of-intellect-man at Sydney:—

As for mental wants, talking and reading are out of the question, except it be to scold your servants, and to con over a Sydney newspaper, which contains little else but the miserable party politics of this speck upon the globe, reports of crime and punishment, and low-lived slang and flash, such as fill the pothouse Sunday papers of London.

Literary men, men of science, philosophers, do not emigrate to new countries where their acquirements would be neither rewarded nor admired. Sir Walter Scott, Sir Humphry Davy, and Mr. Malthus, would not earn as much in this colony as three brawny experienced ploughmen; and though the inordinate vanity of a new people might be gratified by the possession of them, they would be considered as mere ornaments, and would often be wholly neglected for things of greater utility.

House-rent, that great bugbear of certain economists, is indeed a grievous affair at Sydney, as page 20 proves:—

Behold me established at Sydney, in a small house, a poor vamped-up building, more inconvenient, and far more ugly, than you can imagine, for which I pay a rent of £250 a year. For half the money you could get twice as good a house in any English country town. This excessive house-rent is caused by the dearness of labour, which enhances the cost of building; for, either the builder will exact a rent proportioned to his outlay, or (if he cannot obtain such a rent) he will not build.

Free Emigrants

Of what class then, you ask, have been the great mass of emigrants from England, not convicts? Excellent people in their way, most of them; farmers, army and navy surgeons, subalterns on half-pay, and a number of indescribable adventurers, from about the twentieth rank in England. They came here to live, not to enjoy; to eat and drink, not to refine; "to settle"—that is, to roll in a gross plenty for the body, but to starve their minds. To these must be added convicts, many of whom are become rich and influential; and some, not exactly convicts, to whom England ceased to be a convenient residence. The English who live at Boulogne, some for cheapness, some from misfortune, and some from fear, would offer, I should think, a fair sample of the materials which compose the best society in New South Wales; though, I must admit, that the bustling, thriving settler of New South Wales is a companion, rather ignorant though he be—far away preferable to the not more enlightened, but melancholy English sluggard of Boulogne. To form a due conception of the "upper classes" here, suppose all the natives of France annihilated, and the whole country belonging to the English residents of Boulogne. In that case, there would be an almost perfect resemblance between those Englishmen who, across a narrow channel, can see their own country, and those who, at its antipodes look upon the Pacific Ocean.

Society and Manners

As in France, the first class call themselves "gens comme il faut;" and in England, "people of fashion," or "the world"—so here, the leaders of society are distinguished by a peculiar term. They are called "respectable." Not to speak of France, it is difficult to say what in England constitutes "fashion." Not high birth, certainly—for some of the despots of English society are sprung from the dunghill. Our epithet to express exclusiveness is, I think better chosen—for, though strictly speaking, it means worthy of respect, it is claimed, here, only by those to whom respect is paid. In England, the Quarterly Review tells us, "respectability" sometimes means keeping a gig—here it always means dining with the governor.

Our manners set the fashion. Those whom we exclude, exclude others. Free emigrants claim to be of a nature superior to convicts; convicts, whose terms of punishment have expired, behave as if their flesh and blood were wholly unlike that of convicts still in durance; convicts, who have not been convicted south of the line, scorn those who have; and these several classes, except the last, are as proud and tenacious of their privileges as is every distinctive class in England, except the unhappy lowest; or, as is every shade of colour in the West Indies except the perfect black.

The Population

Of the settlement may amount in round numbers to 45,000. Of these only 14,000, including women and children, have not been convicted of felony; and two-thirds of the remainder, seven-eights being grown men, are galley-slaves, still in chains!

Influence of Convict Labour

Little more than forty years ago this country was an absolute waste. By way of contrast, behold, in the parts first settled, the following proofs of wealth: a thriving capital, and several interior towns, the latter being larger and better constructed than the capitals of some English settlements in America, a hundred years after their foundation; excellent roads; productive turnpikes; crowded market-places; public hotels, superior to the best in North America, even at this late hour; warehouses, through which there is a constant flow of luxuries from all parts of the world; public carriages, almost as well managed as those of England; an astonishing number of private carriages, built in Long Acre; several newspapers, and other periodical works; booksellers' shops, well supplied from Europe; two banks of deposit and discount; many churches and chapels; very good schools for rich and poor; scientific, literary, and philanthropic societies; a botanical garden; a turf club; packs of hounds; dinner parties, concerts and balls; fine furniture, plate, and jewels; and though last, not least, many gradations in society, being so many gradations in wealth.

Whence have come all those things, over and above mere subsistence, which astonish the beholder, when he reflects that this colony has been planted little more than forty years?

An example has just passed my window, in the shape of a dashing English landau. It contains a "lady," who married a poor half-pay lieutenant, and who now drinks tea that would cost in England twenty shillings the pound. They emigrated to New South Wales in 1815. But how did she get that carriage, and how does she manage to send to China for the gunpowder? Thus:—Her husband is both landowner and merchant. Being constantly supplied with a number of convict labourers, he breeds cattle and cultivates grain; and as he gives to his labourers but just enough for their subsistence, he has a large surplus produce. Having sold to the local government wheat and beef for the supply of prisons, hospitals, and barracks, he is paid partly with bills upon the English treasury, and partly with dollars, sent from England for the support of the great penitentiary. He remits one of those bills to his London agent, and desires him to purchase, with the proceeds thereof, a superb landau. In less than a year, his wife "rides in her coach." He sends some of the dollars to Canton, and purchases therewith a cargo of tea, of which he gives to his wife as much as she likes, and sells the rest to the wives of other men, who pay him with bills or dollars, received again from the government for wheat and beef. Thus, you see, Mrs. – is indebted for two decided proofs of wealth to the prevalence of crime in England. Even the coat of arms on her landau was found by your Herald's College, in return for a part of the proceeds of that bill, which was drawn to pay for the food of the soldiers who drove the convicts, who produced the food. Our old friend Sir George Nayler would no doubt start at being told of his obligation to the pickpockets of London. And the rogues are little aware of their influence in political economy; but I have stated a plain fact, which, if you have any doubts about it, pray submit both to Sir George himself, and to Mr. M'Culloch.