These were the inducements held out with eminent success to tempt men most unfit for the toil of early colonisation to emigrate to a colony which was to be founded, not by slow degrees, but complete. The land was to be sold in England, at such a fixed price as would, by preventing labourers from becoming landowners "too soon," preserve a "hired labour price," and secure high profits on good wages. The proceeds of the land sold were to be applied to supplying labourers with free passages, and thus a complete section of all the ranks and classes composing the parent state was to be transplanted, full grown, to the antipodes.
In the commencement the commissioners found difficulty in selling the quantity of land and raising a sufficient amount of the loan of £200,000, at £10 per cent., authorised by the government. But eventually these difficulties were overcome by the active assistance of Mr. G.. F. Angas, and Mr. John Wright, the once eminent and afterwards notorious banker of Covent Garden.
Mr. Angas resigned his post as commissioner, and formed the South Australian Company, which commenced operations by purchasing a large quantity of land from the commissioners with certain special privileges. A sum of £30,000 completed the preliminary financial operations, and the first part of the colonising career of South Australia commenced.
The South Australian Company, which had obtained special privileges in consideration of their large and early purchase, lost no time in sending out a pioneer expedition, with emigrants and officers, to make preparations for carrying on every kind of pursuit considered likely to be profitable in a colony—farming, sheep-feeding, banking, building, and whaling. We may mention here that after an experience of eleven years the company have found reason to subside into the humble but more profitable position of absentee landholders and land jobbers.
Colonel Light was despatched by the commissioners in March, 1836, and a surveying staff and a few emigrants; and when he arrived at the appointed rendezvous in Nepean Bay, on the 19th August, he found three vessels of the South Australian Company, which had brought a body of emigrants who were settled on Kangaroo Island; and in November the Africaine arrived with the colonial secretary, a banking association, and a newspaper.
In July Captain Hindmarsh, the governor, sailed in the Buffalo, a vessel of war, with a number of emigrants.
