become wealthy, and, with the support of the Government, powerful as an aristocracy. The democratic multitude would look upon their large possessions with envy, and upon the proprietors with hatred. As this democratic feeling has already taken deep root in the colony in consequence of the absurd and mischievous policy pursued by Governor Macquarie, and as there is already a strong combination amongst that class of persons, it cannot be too soon opposed with vigour."
Something of the sort must be done "if His Majesty's Government propose to retain this colony as a dependency of Great Britain." With augmentation of population the aristocratic body should be enlarged. Flocks would multiply,—Great Britain would receive fine wool,—and "British manufactures to an immense amount would be consumed in the colony."
Grantees of large estates should be compelled to fulfil certain conditions, otherwise the Government would be disappointed and the colony embarrassed. "Adventurers without capital retard all improvement, and as they sink deeper into poverty and distress swell the mass of discontent, become most furious democrats, and attribute the misery into which they are plunged not to their own idleness or want of discretion, but to the errors of the Government, and the oppression of the wealthy."
The actual state of the colony may be discerned more clearly through the workings of Macarthur's mind in this period than in the laboured disquisitions of numerous books. He descried the difficulty for which Gibbon Wakefield afterwards propounded a remedy in the "sufficient price" for land. He would withhold land from those who were not "men of character possessed of skill and capital."
Living in a colony where only convict labour existed, Macarthur aimed by arbitrary limitation of government grants and assignments, to do that which the sagacious Wakefield strove to do in a free community by fixing such a price upon land as would restrict its occupation to those who could profitably use it. Macarthur's plan seemed more arbitrary than Wakefield's. Yet thoroughly to carry the latter into practice, it would have been necessary to be prepared to enhance the price in case of need so much as practically to prohibit general sale, and thus the two plans coincided in principle.
