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Life of Sir George Grey: Governor, High commissioner, and Premier. An Historical Biography.

The Retrencher

The Retrencher.

Grey was sent out to South Australia, as ministers have been placed in office, to effect a thorough retrenchment. He took stringent measures to reduce the expenditure, and in a year he actually cut it down from the figures above stated to £34,000, according to one page 22authority—to £28,000, according to another. He stopped the public works then in progress, and thus reduced to beggary nearly 2,000 men, women, and children, who had to be supported as paupers. He reduced the wages of the emigrants whom the Colony stood pledged provisionally to support. He thus raised against himself the entire labouring class. His retrenchments were not confined to the bottom of the social scale. He abolished three departments —the Stores department, the office of Registrar-General, and the Signal-master's department. The expenses of the Post Office and the gaol (built at great cost—in a crimeless land)! were ruthlessly cut down. As always, he did not spare himself. The modest establishment of Government House was reduced. He thus raised the powerful class of office-holders against him.

The consequences were of the most serious description. A period of fictitious prosperity was brought suddenly to an end. All classes of property became unsaleable. Bankruptcies multiplied; in that small community there were 37 in a single year, and 136 writs were issued through the sheriff's court. A storm of unpopularity broke on the unfortunate Governor. Angry crowds marched to Government House and threatened his defenceless person. Attacks were made on him at public meetings, where his recall was unanimously demanded. The menace of impeachment was flung in his face. He was burnt in effigy. The press was dead against him, and virulently assailed him. Disappointed claimants, he told the Secretary of State, have "harassed me in every possible way," the ugliest included. He did not mention, what we now know, that blackmailing was attempted and frauds put on him. When the crisis had passed, he admitted that he would not willingly go through it again. So say the English Prime Minister and the Colonial Premier. They have often to "go through" a still fiercer ordeal, as was also Grey's later experience. He bore it all with fortitude and remembered it magnanimously. Looking back on it, he was willing "to extenuate the intemperate language and conduct of some page 23few." He was still able to forgive, but it may be suspected that his silence about South Australia in later years implied that in the long run he had not quite or finally forgiven.

He yet left no stone unturned to ease the situation he had created. The banks refused to negotiate his drafts, but he borrowed £1,800 from the Commissariat Chest and £3,000 from the Government of New South Wales. He sacrificed £400 of his small salary of £1,000. With these tiny resources he made head against the distress. What to do with the masses of unemployed? The baffled Secretary of State, writing like a wiseacre, instructed him to ascertain whether the Governors of Western Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand would receive some of the surplus population of South Australia on the understanding that their passages would be paid. Grey took more statesmanlike steps.

First of all, he recast the system of taxation. He created new sources of revenue. At the instance of that great colonial reformer, E. G. Wakefield, the income derived from the sale of waste lands, which ought not to be regarded as a source of ordinary revenue, had been devoted to the promotion of immigration; it was the distinctive feature of his policy. At the suggestion of the Colonial Office, Grey divided the revenue thus derived into two parts, of which one was set apart for its pristine end, while the other was to be expended in the work of settling families on the land and in aiding the aborigines. He heavily taxed the necessaries of life. He unadvisably, but perhaps necessarily, imposed port dues on ships entering Adelaide. It was an unpopular tax.

He next grappled with the problem of the distribution of population. It was at an acute stage. Of the white population of South Australia considerably more than one-half resided in Adelaide: 8,439 out of 14,610 were resident in the capital. While he let no one starve, he refused to relieve those who insisted on staying in town when they might go into the country and work on the land. His chief object, he explicitly stated, was "to give the labourers no inducement to remain in town, or page 24upon public works; but to make them regard the obtaining of a situation with a settler as a most desirable result." His efforts towards this end were largely successful. An official table prepared two years after Grey's departure from the Colony shows that the number of inhabitants in the rural districts had risen from 6,121 in 1840, the year of his arrival, to 11,259 in 1843 and to 14,977 in 1845. The number of inhabitants in Adelaide had simultaneously fallen to 6,107 in 1843. These speaking figures show that the tide had been effectually turned, and the drift was now setting in steadily towards the country.

With the solution of the problem of distribution all other problems were in course of being solved. The same table that reveals the rural movement of the population shows an upward movement in both agriculture and industry. The value of exports of colonial produce rose from £15,650 in 1840 to £66,160 in 1843; the number of factories rose from 4 to 31, and of flour mills from none to 16. Later figures and other statistics were no less eloquent. The Governor had succeeded. Well might Lord John Bussell sound his praises. "In giving him the government of South Australia I gave him as difficult a problem in colonial government as could be committed to any man, and I must say, after four or five years experience of his administration there, that he has solved the problem with a degree of energy and success which I could hardly have expected from any man.''

Providence was on his side. The discovery of coppermines, through a series of accidents, opened up a new vein of wealth and at the same time stimulated land sales, which had languished. The very elements fought for him. A fine summer brought a bounteous harvest, and the weather, which had ruined the reforming measures of Turgot, as it afterwards ruined the reforming measures of Loris Melikoff, came to his aid. He could now afford to remit the port dues he had temporarily levied to raise a revenue. He was a successful and prosperous ruler.

Grey was not the sole worker towards this consummation. He had an efficient co-operator in one of the founders of the Colony, George Fife Angas. Mainly page 25through his untiring exertions, a large stream of German immigration poured into South. Australia, giving it the exotic, but healthy, complexion it still retains. Large tracts of country were thus settled with desirable immigrants. And this was only one of the schemes by which this indefatigable coloniser sought to promote the prosperity of the Colony. "Never let it be said," cried Herbert Spencer in his ebullient early manhood, "that one man can do but little." By the joint efforts of Grey and Angas the crisis was thus surmounted, and the Colony was started on a career of stable prosperity.