Volume 66: Macarthur family correspondence relating to land, 1819-1881: No. 374
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[Page 374]
3.
or those officers of the Department, to whom the measurement and mapping of such lands is confided.
But these facts and circumstances, we respectfully submit, have a direct and most important bearing upon the question at issue.
The declared object, as we understand it, of selling these small farms is to encourage Agriculture and to establish throughout the Country, an independent proprietary class of smaller Landholders exercising the homely good qualities and steady industry of Agricultural Communities, and bringing up their children to be honest and virtuous members of Society. The effect of such sales, in isolated and remote situations, is generally the very reverse. A class of small graziers is thereby established, presently occupying the Crown Pastures, and preying upon those landed proprietors, the expenditure of whose Capital upon their Estates, is the produce of whose flocks has mainly contributed to the peopling and improvement of the Country, and the development of its resources; Cattle Stealing, sly grog selling, and disorder are fostered, or actually carried on. Families are brought up beyond the reach of Religion and Education, under the most debasing influences, and children reared, and as it were trained, to vice, disorder, and crime.
These are strong statements, but we believe them