Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/388

King's despatches abound with proofs of his encouragement of farming, and Mr. Marsden actively seconded the Governor's efforts. In the fixing of task-work for the "government gangs" we find Marsden recommending the separation of the idle from the hardworking, so that the latter might not suffer from the shortcomings of the former. At the same time he urged that the "task of fire-making" in clearing timber should be reduced from sixty-three rods, which was excessive, to forty, which was fair. Though strict, the reverend farmer was just.

How pressing is "the art of our necessities," and how, under varying conditions, human wants dictate kindred measures, was shown by the proclamation of commons for the use of settlers. The community seemed to crave the distinction of land into town, arable, and waste lands, which preceded among our ancestors the feudal system of the Conqueror, and which in the eighteenth century were being rapidly obliterated in England. The sailor Governor, alive to the existence of commons in England, reverted to them as essential to the need of those reprobates of the Aryan family, whom he was appointed to control. He enforced the right of the general body to prevent waste. He told Lord Hobart (Oct. 1802), "those to whom on the same account (industry) I have given additional quantities of land, I have prevented from leaving or making away with it by granting it to their children, who are precluded from alienating it before they have attained the age of twenty-one years, and then not to dispose of it without the Governor's consent first obtained."

As the patriarch of the community, he asserted rights on its behalf, which, in the dim ages, primitive households arrogated to themselves in the cradles of the Aryan race. The possession of the fee by individuals was sometimes barred by the imperious claims of the household and the clan. The modern instincts which make freeholds dear to Englishmen had brought about the acquisition of homesteads, and in a few of them the word "home" was becoming precious. But the town or village community having being formed at Sydney and elsewhere, and farms having been fenced in and cultivated at various places, another want was impressed upon the Governor's mind.