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Australian experiment, were afraid that the settlers sent to Adelaide 

 could not be retained if they were able to get equally good land across 

 the border at a much lower price than that fixed by the South Aus- 

 tralian Company. 



Perhaps the most important feature of these regulations was 

 the abrogation of Lord Ripon's instructions that all future sales 

 were to be by auction, and a reversion to the old practice of a 

 fixed price for country lands, retaining the minimum at 1 per 

 acre, and the existing auction system for town lands. But their 

 influence on settlement was not much, as they were only in force 

 for a little over a year. 



The opinion of the early settlers that this minimum was practi- 

 cally prohibitive, aimed specially at the pastoral interest and to 

 prevent the accumulation of large estates, seems somewhat strained 

 in the light of later developments. But in the early forties it was 

 generally and vigorously maintained that it was impossible to grow 

 wool at a profit on land that cost 1 per acre. So strong was this 

 feeling that it found expression in the Beport of a Committee of 

 the Legislative Council of New South Wales in the following 

 unqualified terms : 



" Simultaneously with the occurrence above enumerated, and 

 tending to aggravate their unfortunate influence, was the measure 

 of Her Majesty's Government for raising the upset price of land 

 from five shillings to twelve shillings, and subsequently from twelve 

 shillings to twenty shillings an acre. The adoption of this scale of 

 augmented upset price has been a complete annihilation of the land 

 fund. Neither the profits of sheep farming nor agriculture can ever 

 justify the investment of capital in land at these prices ; nor do 

 your Committee believe that any capitalist will ever be induced to 

 emigrate from the mother-country while such a system regulating 

 land sales is in force." 



The belief of the Council that the fixed price of 1 per acre 

 would have no attraction for capitalists was not well founded. 

 One of the conditions of the Commissioner's regulations was that 

 any person paying 5,120 in cash, either in London or in the 

 colony, would not be limited in the selection of the eight square 

 miles of territory which that sum represented to districts already 



