204 A HISTORY OP THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



It can hardly be supposed that the object of the Government in 

 raising the upset price was solely to check the creation of a class of 

 large landholders. That idea is at variance with their readiness to 

 sell large blocks for cash down. Bather it would appear as if it 

 was to put difficulties in the way of the labouring classes becoming 

 proprietors at all. In fact, the policy which then influenced ,the 

 British Cabinet was exactly the reverse of that which has been 

 aimed at, though frequently missed, by successive Land Acts of the 

 Victorian Government. 



In 1839 it was officially believed that the European immigrant 

 labourer was the one thing needful for the Australian Colonies, and 

 that he could only be retained as a labourer by some check upon his 

 passing at once into the position of a landholder. What better 

 check could be applied to the poor man than a prompt increase in 

 the price of the article he had come so far to secure. Twenty years 

 later all the energies of the local Government were directed towards 

 discovering a method by which the labourer should be put in pos- 

 session of the land at far less than its marketable value, while the 

 capitalist, supposed to be represented by the squatter, should be 

 shut out from participation in the bargain. 



It is hardly necessary to point out, that as the enhanced price 

 theory failed to keep men as labourers who were fitted by experi- 

 ence or capacity to be agriculturists or sheep farmers, so the 

 attempts of later years to exclude any particular class from partici- 

 pation in the soil which it was necessary to sell were equally futile. 



In the early days the Government was the land monopolist, and 

 should have based its estimate of values on what the soil, under a 

 judicious course of agricultural treatment, might be expected to 

 yield. But the amount of land actually required for practical farm- 

 ing was very small. By the official census of March, 1841, the 

 population of the whole Port Phillip district was under 12,000, of 

 whom nearly one-third were children. Melbourne and immediate 

 suburbs contained fully one-half of this number. A very limited 

 area of cultivation would provide the food requirements of these. 

 There were no facilities for an export trade, and no market nearer 

 than Europe if there had been, while no one thought for a moment 

 of buying land for grazing purposes only. 



