MR LATROBE AS SUPERINTENDENT 253 



of the revenue derived from thence to the purposes of immigration. 

 A million sterling has in some shape or other been appropriated 

 to these purposes. It was forgotten that capital and labour, as 

 elements of colonisation, should exist in a new country in proportion 

 to each other, and it was a fatal mistake to send the one out to 

 bring the other in. The circulating medium, which, like the blood 

 in the animal system, diffused life and activity through every part, 

 has been withdrawn from use, and the colony is now in a state of 

 inanition. What renders the matter worse is that a large portion 

 of the sum paid for land, and thus applied to the purpose of immi- 

 gration, was borrowed." 



Commenting on this report, Mr. Charles Griffith, in his book 

 entitled The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District 

 of New South Wales, says pertinently : 



"If it had been added that by far the greater part of the land 

 was bought on speculation, in order to sell again at an enormous 

 advance to expected immigrants, that a small number of men having 

 a large command of capital attempted a monopoly with this object, 

 and that the speculation failed, that while the land yielded no 

 returns the interest on the borrowed money had to be paid, sufficient 

 cause of ruin might have been discovered without looking for its 

 origin in the subsequent disbursement of the purchase-money. . . . 

 In my mind, the real subject of complaint against the Government 

 is this, that by putting up comparatively small quantities of land 

 at a time, and by holding the sales at distant intervals, they did, 

 under the specious terms of limiting the supply to the demand, 

 play into the hands of the monopolists. Many of the newly arrived 

 settlers at that time were forced to buy land at any price. Several 

 had wooden houses, and all of them had hundreds of useless things. 

 Store rent and house rent were dreadfully high, and the expense of 

 living in Melbourne ruinous. To persons so circumstanced land 

 became, in a financial point of view, as much a necessity as air or 

 water in a natural one ; and it is this class of men, driven to the 

 wall between the land jobber and the Government, that excite my 

 sympathy. I recollect the dismay with which the announcement 

 of a land sale at the end of 1840 was received by some of the minor 

 fry of speculators at Melbourne. This was put off by the Governor, 



