An Australian Example
An inquest of this sort was made in Western Australia, where Sir James Mitchell worked out the best of all schemes for settling immigrants on the land. In that most lovely, most English part of Australia, the land had to be cleared, in some districts, of trees and scrub, in others of marsh and water. Two of the more successful of the immigrants and the keenest were a young man and his young wife from the Old Kent Road. They loved the land and the climate and were marvellously confident of their future. A good many holdings were established, not without success, but the whole scheme was finally brought to an end by the cost. It was decided that you could not settle a smallholder at less than a cool thousand pounds, and that this sum might in less favourable cases be at least doubled. What a deal of good pioneer work has been done in Western Australia, which is almost an island cut off from its Eastern neighbours by a thousand miles of barrenness, and how rich and fertile an island ! Sir James Mitchell's plan for smallholdings is arrested ; but all who know its beneficence will rejoice that Fairbridge school for boy and girl immigrants is being extended. There is nothing of its sort within the Empire so well designed and administered.
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