148 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. {1 Ava., 1899. 
to be made, the Government should undertake the task, until we are in sufficient 
nunbers to carry the business ourselves as in Europe. TI have so arranged the scheme 
that the credit assistance is given for 5 years; after this, 10 years are allowed for 
repaying the advances in 10 yearly instalments, which can be made in agricultural 
notes. Only a small charge, say of 2 per cent., will be made for administrative 
expenses. Necessity demands from us also to establish our own agricultural credit, as 
necessity had demanded it from the European farmers. Remember, gentlemen, that 
as the warehouses and factories are the securities for the merchants and tradesmen to 
obtain their credit, so our lands, our farms, our growing crops, our landed homes are 
the securities to obtain credit for ourselves and by ourselves. Our farm—our home—is 
our bank. It is now left to us tillers of the soil to do our duty to ourselves and our 
children, to assert our rights, to recognise our privileges and maintain our position in 
the community—in a word, to create and establish our agricultural credit Pach it for 
ourselves and through ourselves either by agricultural associations or the already 
constituted divisional boards or by district agricultural councils to be elected by the 
farmers only under a special Act to be passed. The Premier—the Hon. J. R. Dickson 
—has promised to do something in this direction during this Parliament, and it is now 
left to us to wake up Government and Parliament, and get them to establish the 
agricultural credit, and not merely throw dust in our eyes with promises of facilities 
for us to form societies and borrow money from people total strangers to our class 
and diametrically opposed to our interests. Gentlemen, if I have succeeded in this 
quarter of an hour in clearly pointing out the nature and advantages of agricultural 
credit, it will now only remain for you to express your opinion here, and in your 
respective districts, so that the scheme may soon be put on the statute-book of 
Queensland. Then the labour question will be partially done away with, as very few 
will work for wages when everyone may become his own landowner—his own employer. 
Then an honest man, a tiller of the soil, will see the fruit of his honest work turned 
into his own capital, created by himself through the agricultural credit. Then the 
pessens social warfare between capital and labour will be closed, as labour will 
ecome its own capital! Then our millions of acres of splendid virgin soil will be 
converted into smiling farms, studded with happy homes. Then a free, independent, 
and prosperous yeomanry will spring up, who will be an impregnable bulwark to our 
national freedom, and become the whole country’s pride! 
The following is a draft of Dr. D. Thomatis’ Bill :— 
AGRICULTURAL CREDIT BILL. 
PREAMBLE. 
In order to encourage land settlement and to better develop agricultural and 
pastoral resources, be it enacted as follows :— 
z 1. There are two classes of settlement on Crown land—viz., (a) Agricultural, (b) 
astoral. 
PART I.—AGRICULTURAL SETTLEMENT. 
2. The selector of a confirmed selection may make application for agricultural 
credit in three copies—one to the District Land Commissioner, the other to the 
Divisional Board (when the District Agricultural Councils are constituted by a new 
Act of Parliament, they shall take the place of the Divisional Boards), and the third 
to the Minister for Agriculture. 
3. The application to the Board shall be presented by one of the members. 
4. The lees may apply for State eens for fences erected up to a sum 
equivalent to the value of material bought, exclusively of wooden posts and rails and 
labour; also for dwelling-house and other buildings erected to the value of material 
bought, including sawn timber, but not the labour. 
5. If the selector proves that he and his family have resided continuously on his 
selection for the last six months, he may also apply half-yearly for an advance of ten 
pounds sterling for every six months’ residence of each member of his family over 18 
years of age, provided after the first two half-yearly advances he yearly obtains from 
nis land marketable crops to the value of at least two half-yearly advances. 
6. The selector may also apply for advances on permanent improyements in the 
shape of scrub-clearing, ploughing, cultivation, and planting to the amount of half the 
value of such improvements, and also of half the value of the marketable products 
cropped on his Jand. : 
, Fr At the expiration of five years from the date of the first advance, all advances 
cease. 
8. Agricultural selections must-be cleared and cultivated at least at the rate of 
one-fortieth part of their area every year until all advances ana charges have been 
repaid to the State and received a full discharge, and such portions cultivated must 
