Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/545

Sir Thomas Brisbane freely granted to reputable persons licenses to depasture live stock on Crown lands. The licenses were revocable at six months' notice; but though incidentally they asserted the control of the government over waste lands, their main purpose was to determine who might, and who might not, be privileged to establish a home removed from the eye of administrators of the law.

The confirmation of Macarthur's predictions as to the quality of wool which Australia could yield without aid from artificial food or shelter for sheep, and the knowledge that Macquarie's disfavour would no longer repress free settlers desirous to lay the foundation of family prosperity, stimulated immigration, and promoted the formation of a large association-the Australian Agricultural Company.

Members of Parliament, directors of the Bank of England, and others, took shares. The proposed capital was one million sterling. To promote the outlay of so much money in the colony the government promised a grant of a million acres of land. The land selected was at Port Stephens and its vicinity, and at Liverpool Plains.^[1]

The Company imported valuable stock, and improved the agricultural methods of the colony. But convict labour is not cheap labour, and a large company is always the prey of some of its servants, or the scapegoat of their mistakes. It cannot be said that the shareholders derived large interest from their capital. They made arrangements with the Colonial Government, and took over the coalworks at Newcastle; and the Home Government gave them a monopoly of the right to raise coal in the colony for thirty-one years. The right was eventually waived (1847), but was not abused in the meantime. Men of high character were selected as managers, and exercised their trust in no sordid manner. Amongst them were Sir Edward Parry, the Arctic explorer, and Admiral P. P. King.

The charter of the Company was dated Nov. 1824, and Lord Bathurst instructed the Governor on the subject in May 1825. He had, in 1823, directed him to grant ten