2-222 (Raw)

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In a Colony like Demerara, where land is used for scarcely any purpose but cultivation, and cultivation too of the most expensive sort, the theory might perhaps be practically applied; but, to a pastoral country like Australia, it is evidently altogether inapplicable. It may be essential however here to observe that wherever land is of a quality or in a locality, which renders it fit for cultivation, as in districts of superior fertility or in the neighbourhood of Towns, it is usually divided into much smaller lots than Sections of Square miles; such smaller divisions are called "Cultivation allotments", the word Section being made use of only for grazing land, and they are made to vary from 20 to 320 acres. [228]
When in the neighbourhood of large Towns as Melbourne, they are called "Suburban allotments".
But if the theory, by which it is sought to make persons cultivate lands in Australia in the natural order of their advantages, be altogether incapable of good, that, which would seek to prevent the dispersion of the People, is only incapable of mischief, because it is utterly impossible to reduce it to practice. As well might it be attempted to confine the Arabs of the Desert within a circle, traced upon their sands, as to confine the Graziers or Woolgrowers of New South Wales within any bounds that can possibly be assigned to them; and as certainly as the Arabs would be starved, so also would the flocks and herds of New South Wales, if they were so confined, and the prosperity of the Country be at an end.
The time will come, if the Colony continue to prosper, when it may be more desirable (that is to say profitable) for a proprietor to improve the land he holds, so as to make its produce suffice for his increasing flocks than to seek (as is the present practice) for new lands in distant regions; but it may perhaps be wiser to let this time arrive naturally, as it will, than to attempt to accelerate it by any contrivances.
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