to express my best wishes for their welfare :— Mr. S. ALLEN, Secretary to the Albion Building Society, Adelaide; Mrs. J. M. BELL, Lady Superintendent of the Adelaide Institution for the Education of Young Ladies; Mr. J. M. BELL, Adelaide; Rev. W. BROWN; Mr. JOHN EMERSON, Solicitor, Adelaide; Messrs. ENGLISH & BROWN, Builders, Adelaide; Dr. H. ESAU, Woodside; Rev. JOHN GARDNER and Family, Adelaide; Mrs. GILBERT, North Terrace; Mr. JOHN HATCHETT, Solicitor, Adelaide; Mr. C. SCHILLING, Land Agent, Adelaide; Mr. J. SCHOMBURGH, Adelaide; Mr. GEORGE SOWARD and Family, Adelaide; Mr. JOHN WHINHAM, North Adelaide Grammar School; Mrs. WHINHAM and Family. 33, Quayside, Newcastle-on-Tyne, January, 1862. 4. Pleasures incidental to a Fine Climate............... 21 18. Literature in South Australia 19. Laws and Lawyers in South Australia......................................... 107 CHAPTER I. SHORT DESCRIPTION AND HISTORY OF THE COLONY. No future tyro in history will lack a suggestive and brilliant date of the minority of South Australia. It will stand amidst the dazzling chronicles of the first twenty years of the reign of Victoria Alexandrina. We meet to celebrate the majority of our colony. As a child, South Australia attracted more than ordinary notice. It could never be called feeble, or dull, or idle. It always had vivacity, energy, and confidence quite equal to its years. Some said it was pert and noisy, others called it forward and boastful. But all this was nothing but its natural life, and vigor, and buoyancy, which developed and grew up into the spirit and robustness and self-reliance of strong and noble manhood. If any think they can point to childish follies and youthful indiscretions, we can remind them that there came also seasons of chiding and discipline, of reflection and repentance: and that as the result, without any loss of animation or action, there is quite as much manly solidity and dignity as the severest censor could look for at the age of twenty-one.-Extracts from the speech of the President of the Legislative Council on the celebration of the majority of South Australia, December 28th, 1857. SOUTH AUSTRALIA is a large portion of the South West Division of New Holland or Australia, adjoining the colonies of Victoria and New South Wales, and is supposed to contain about 300,000 square miles in superficial extent, and 200,000,000 acres, and consequently is considerably more than twice the size of Great Britain and Ireland. In future chapters I shall enter into details upon the physical peculiarities, climate, and other topics connected with the colony, and now proceed to give a short account of its foundation, development, and progress. A About thirty years ago the idea of starting a new colony occurred to some gentlemen, and an association was formed for carrying out the project, principally on the views illustrated by Mr. E. G. Wakefield in his writings on a new mode of colonization; and as these colonizing canons consisted of specious and ingenious theories extremely palatable to capitalists, they were eagerly embraced by the promoters of the scheme, and in 1834 an Act was obtained for founding a colony, and in the year 1836 it was regularly established. The principles and theories on which a supposed model colony was founded having been utterly exploded and their fallacy shown by experience, I will detail them and relate their practical result. The first principle was to sell land in England to intending colonists at so high a price that labourers should not be able for a few years to purchase land, and so as to make them work for wages in order to enable society to remain concentrated, and the relations between Employers and Employed to be the same as in Europe; or, in his own words, "There is but one object in a price, and about that there can be no mistake. The sole object of a price is to prevent labourers from becoming landowners too soon; the price must be sufficient for that one purpose and no other." This fixed or sufficient price for land was to be devoted to exporting labouring emigrants. It was proposed to transplant not people merely but society, for every capitalist going to the colony would know that his want of labour was sure to be supplied. South Australia would be the first colony combining plenty of labour with plenty of land. It was also a material part of Mr. Wakefield's plan that a very large number of persons should go out at the same time, as in colonization |