Page:Advanced Australia.djvu/114

200,000 State-aided emigrants landed between 1861 and 1896. The revival in British farming, which dates from the last named year, has been followed by a decline in the departures from the old country for the United States; but those for Canada and Australia have remained stationary, while those for South Africa, owing to matters of recent history, have gone up 40 per cent. Queensland, though she doubled her population in the five years preceding 1886, has increased much more slowly since then. But she has been the first of the Australian colonies to recur to the system of encouraging immigration, setting an example which has quite recently been followed by New Zealand: and assistance towards the cost of passages, second and third class, may now be granted, through the Agent-General, to the families of small capitalists, farmers, market-gardeners, dairymen, etc. The policy of "bursting up the big estates," urged by the Radicals of Victoria in the 'eighties, has been followed by Queensland after a more peaceable fashion in the Acts of 1884, 1886, and 1894, already referred to. Grazing farms of 20,000 acres and under are granted on the resumed lands upon leases of 30 years. Practically, the only outlay required for "improvements" is for a 6-wire fence, costing, say, £30 per mile. Good young ewes may fetch from 6s. to 9s. "off shears," i.e. without wool. But the cautious flockmaster will probably, at the start, purchase 5000 aged ewes at about 2s. 6d., taking the chances, in good seasons, of getting a couple of lambings off them. The resumptions also include lands which are open to the new-comer in farms of 1280 acres or less, on a 50 years' lease, but which are easily converted into freehold at about £1 per acre. To one of these he is allowed to add a grazing homestead of not over 2560 acres, on lease, at ¾d. per acre, and a homestead selection, freehold, of 160 acres, on