148 A COLONIAL AUTOCRACY. 



heavy arrears to make up in 1821, and numbers of settlers were 

 waiting for their land to be surveyed and grants made out. 



It was at this time unusual to give leases of Crown lands ex- 

 cept in the towns. Occasionally permission was given to pasture 

 sheep on vacant land adjoining an estate, and rights of common 

 had been given to settlers at Richmond in the Hawkesbury dis- 

 trict as early as I8O4. 1 In 1820 many farms were let by their 

 owners on leases of seven or fourteen years at rents of 2os. an 

 acre if paid in money, and 303. if paid in grain. These were 

 usually small estates of five to twenty acres. 2 



The land in the townships, in Parramatta and in Sydney, 

 was generally leased from the Crown for periods of seven or 

 fourteen years. Before Macquarie's time it had never been 

 made the subject of grants, but in 1810 he strongly advised that 

 good building should be encouraged by alienating the land out- 

 right, and his advice was adopted. 3 On the Hawkesbury the 

 settlers had built their houses on the low lands in the midst of 

 their corn-fields, and whenever the river rose in flood their houses 

 were devastated. Macquarie offered them additional allotments 

 on the high land, to be considered inseparable from their farms, 

 that they might build homesteads above the danger line, but very 

 few consented to move. Probably they were afraid to leave 

 their corn unprotected in the fields below. 4 



The houses in the country were very plain and cheap, cost- 

 ing as a rule no more than ^100. The convict servants on large 

 estates built huts of mud and bark, each two sharing one between 

 them. Macarthur had thought of building them large mess- 

 houses, but they had a distaste of living in great numbers, due, 

 he suspected, to the fear of each that plans of mischief, and es- 

 pecially cattle-stealing, would be discovered and betrayed by 

 others. 5 



Riley believed house rent to be higher in Sydney than in 



1 Bigge's Report, III. It was granted by Governor King, and the document 

 which is printed in Report III. is a very strange one. Bigge held that it was good 

 in law. Macquarie set aside commons for some of the townships he founded. 

 See H.R., VII., p. 468. G.G.O., isth December, 1810. 



2 Cox, Evidence to Bigge, Appendix to Reports. R.O., MS. 



3 D., 30th April, 1810. H.R., VII. See also Plummer's letter, Chapter III., 

 above. 



4 G.G.O., isth December, 1810, p. 468. H.R. VII. He made similar efforts, 

 later. 



5 Macarthur's Evidence, Appendix to Bigge's Reports. R.O., MS. 



