Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/389

---

COMMONS. THE PLOUGH. 361 He was "warned of the necessity"^ by inconvenience experienced by the Hawkesbury settlers, "who, having others placed immediately behind them, had no means of having their allotments enlarged for their increasing and acquired stock." The common or waste land of the ancient Aryans was therefore established in the forests of Australia. " To remedy that evil your Lordship will observe by the chart that I have granted a tract of land to the settlers of Nelson district as a common ground for grazing their cattle and sheep, which shall be as generally extended as possible to other districts.'* Thus were the problems (the tracing of which in times past exercises antiquarian research) dealt with on the spur of occasion in a new field. A year after- warrs King wrote that every industrious settler was possessed of some kind of live stock, to feed which '* requires pasturage. To give aU two or three hundred acres would soon alienate all the disposable land adjacent to the settlers, and to give par- ticular people three or four hundred acres in places of their own selection would soon reduce the small farmer to sell his farm and stock (because he cannot feed them) to the person who can command money or its worth." The Governor did not aflfect to have discovered a prin- ciple. In a Gazette notice he declared that in order to secure pasturage for the use of settlers the common lands " were to be held and used by the inhabitants of the respective districts as common lands are held and used in that part of Great Britain called England." Incessant efforts were made to induce the farmers to use the plough, but it was by slow degrees that the hoe gave way. In 1806 King wrote : " The plough is now used by many, and from its evident advantage will in time be preferred to the hoe." On ground where wheat was blighted he said : " It is to be lamented that no example or advice can turn the settlers . . . from throwing away their labour and time to procure a wheaten cake, to raise a certain and plentiful crop of maize." The extent of cultivation carried on by the Government was diminished by order of Lord Hobart, as soon as the industry of the settlers augmented after repression of the traffic in spirits. Lord Hobart's order was obeyed, but King pointed out that the " distant observer could not be "•King to Lord Hobart, 7th Aug, 1803,