CHAPTER V
AGRICULTURE AND GOLD
It was the discovery of gold in West Australia that gave the first real impetus to the development of the state. In the earlier half of the nineteenth century the country was urgently in need of labour, and from 1843 onwards was glad to supply the deficiency by the importation of convicts. The convict system "assigned" people, as it was called, to the settlers to live upon their property and perform compulsory labour for them; the residue worked in "road gangs" or in Government penal settlements. All the other states, as they grew and prospered, began to resent the dumping on their shores of the least desirable element of the population from home. As early as 1837 a Parliamentary Committee was appointed to inquire into the whole question, both from the point of view of the unhappy convicts and their Australian hosts, and recommended that the practice should cease. It was, however, too convenient a solution of a difficulty to be readily relinquished by the
