accommodation to their customers, until, moving in a circle of fallacies, the whole colony dreamed of growing rich by selling to each other land which produced nothing.
The series of Secretaries of State for the Colonies, Lords Aberdeen, Glenelg, Normanby, and John Russell, who succeeded each other in rapid succession up to 1842, and Lord Stanley, who held office until 1845, seem all to have taken the promised results of the Wakefield theory for granted—assumed that it was the duty of the government to obtain the highest price for crown lands—that a high price of land would keep down wages, and check dispersion; and to this notion their successor, Lord Grey, adhered, in face of an unbroken line of colonial evidence of the most practical character.
Thus, in August, 1838, Lord Glenelg instructed Sir George Gipps to substitute 12s. for 5s. an acre as the upset price of ordinary land, adding, "If you should observe that the extension of the population should still proceed with a rapidity beyond what is desirable, and that the want of labour still continues to be seriously felt, you will take measures for checking the sale of land even at 12s."
It would be an insult to the powerful understanding of Sir George Gipps to doubt that he was as well aware of the fallacy of this idea as his predecessor, but he came out with the fixed principle of earning the approbation of his official chiefs by zealously and actively carrying out their desires and orders. As he once answered a colonial remonstrant, "I was sent here to carry out the Wakefield system of land sales, and whether it suits the colony or not, it must be done."
Animated by this spirit he adopted two measures which soon transferred the greater part of the ready money of the colonists, new and old, into the colonial treasury. He limited the quantity of land offered for sale so as to raise the competition between new arrivals to the highest pitch, and he successively raised the upset price to the last sum given by the last land-lunatic under the excitement of an auction.
Thus, at a land auction on the 10th June, 1840, at Port Phillip, the price was run up by emulation and competition to such a height, that shipmates of Richard Howitt, with a capital among them of £20,000, only ventured to invest £600. Land was sold at £30 and £40 acre, which, for years afterwards, remained in a state of nature.
In the New South Wales district Sir George Gipps offered and sold land at Illawarra at 12s. and £1 an acre; when raised to £10 an acre it remained unsold; it was then reduced to £1, and, being worthless refuse, still remained unsold. In a second and third district, the upset price was raised to £10 in one instance, and £100 in another,
