tion nearly doubled. Nevertheless in 1820 the acreage under crop was only 31,000 and the area cleared 55,000.[1]
The agricultural future of the Colony was therefore not regarded as hopeful. It was suggested in 1819 that Van Diemen's Land would become the great wheat-producing centre, supplying New South Wales as well as herself, and that New South Wales would be to her as Ireland then was to England.[2] Yet it had already been found from experience that there was no product of the Temperate Zone which could not be cultivated with success in New South Wales.[3] The profound discouragement of the colonists was not therefore based upon any particular vagaries of climate. The leading settlers all gave three reasons, the ignorance and indolence of the small proprietors, the restricted market, and the inefficiency of labour.
The worst of the small proprietors were the emancipists, who were totally unused to farming, and cropped their land continuously until it reached the stage of exhaustion, and then sold it for what it would fetch. Macquarie, who always wrote as though he held a brief for the emancipists, blinded himself to the fact that the majority of them would not farm and did not care to learn to do so. They took all they could out of the land in as short a time as possible, and returned with their profits to the delights and dissipations of the town.
The need of a wider market for grain was a more serious trouble. An attempt to export flour to the Cape of Good Hope in 1815 proved a failure and was not repeated. All distillation being forbidden, the demand of the people for food alone regulated the corn supply. The Government was the greatest buyer
- ↑ The following table may describe the position more clearly:—
1788-1810, 21,000 acres cleared.
7,500 acres under crop.
Population in 1810, 10,452.
1810-1815, 17,500 acres cleared.
11,500 acres under crop.
Population in 1815, 12,911.
1816-1820, 18,300 acres cleared.
12,000 acres under crop.
Population in 1820, 23,939.Figures for 1820 are slightly over-stated. See Bigge, III. Appendix, Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS.
- ↑ Riley, C. on G., 1819.
- ↑ Ibid., 1819. He gives a long list of successful experiments.
