THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE. ir 



who had been convicts and who formed Riley's third class was 

 comparatively free, and marriage between them and the children 

 of freedmen or prisoners was frequent and generally approved. 

 Indeed such connections were far more encouraged and less a 

 matter for reproach in early years than at a later date. 



The lowest rung of the social ladder was made up of convicts 

 still under sentence and " free labourers ". This was, of course, 

 a social and in no sense a legal equality. The development of 

 a class of " poor whites " was an inevitable consequence of the 

 existence of servile labour. The free man fell from the social 

 and economic point of view when he became a competitor of 

 the bond-servant whose labour was compulsory although paid 

 for by food, clothes and a yearly wage. The normal condition 

 of a free man in a country where land might be had for next to 

 nothing and cultivated with scarcely any capital was that of 

 proprietor not labourer, and when Riley placed the latter beside 

 the convicts, he described with perfect accuracy such a man's 

 status in the Colony. 



Probably no more extravagant and careless system of land 

 distribution has ever been adopted in a British colony than 

 that of the first fifteen years of Australian settlement, for al- 

 ready, at the beginning of 1811, 117,269 acres had been 

 alienated. The administrators of the new Continent had two 

 objects before them one, to rid England once for all of her 

 delinquent population the other, to make the Colony self- 

 supporting. In the beginning it was not thought necessary 

 to do more than establish the convicts on the land at the ex- 

 piration of their terms of servitude. Phillip's instructions were 

 quite explicit. 1 Emancipists 2 were to receive grants of 30 

 acres if single, 50 acres if married, with 10 more for each child. 

 The grants were to be free of all fees and taxes for ten years, 

 after which a quit-rent, fixed at sixpence for every 30 acres, was 

 to be charged. 3 In addition to these advantages, Government 

 undertook to provide the ex-convict and his family with ra- 

 tions for twelve months, to give the necessary tools and seed 



1 See Instructions, H.R., I., Ft. II., p. 85, pars, g, 10. 



2 i.e., Men who had been convicts. This was a usual term in New South 

 Wales. 



3 The amount of the quit-rent was left blank in Phillip's instructions, but 

 was settled soon after at the above rate. 



