regulations, a large amount of capital and energy is tending in that direction. During the last few years an immense impetus has been given to agricultural settlement, and we have already arrived at the position of exporting our surplus to Europe. It is no longer a question of producing, but of selling at a profit. This means the maximum of facilities for free exchange of commodities and the minimum of cost of production. How these ends are to be attained is a question the farmers of Victoria must solve for themselves. Any appeal to the State-as at present embodied, at all events-will result in a ludicrous failure, as the idols of the people for the last few years have been simply personifications of ignorance and greed. So-called Liberal politicians are fond of posturing as friends of the farmer; but it is difficult to point out what Liberal politicians have done for the farmer, except to impose taxes on him. They have certainly reduced the value of land; but that surely is a questionable blessing to the struggling selector, hampered for want of capital, whose only (or chief) negotiable security is thus rendered less valuable. They claim to have settled the people upon the land; which is false, as every Land Bill of a pronounced liberal type placed upon the Statute Book played into the hands of speculators, and, if anything, hindered bona fide agricultural settlement. In 1836, there were 50 acres under crop in Victoria, and in 1879, the land returned as under cultivation is 1,688,275 acres. A steady natural development of the agricultural interest took place from 1836 to 1851. In the latter year, for the first time, gold appears in the statistics of the colony as an article of export. Prior to the discovery of the precious metal, the area under crop was 57,472 acres, which is the return for 1851. The moral effect of the gold fever on the farming mind was immediately apparent, as the area under tillage dropped, in the two following years, to 36,771 and 34,816 acres respectively. But not for long, apparently, did dreams of an impossible El Dorado haunt the bucolic soul. The land of promise for the farmer lay not in the alluvium of Ballarat or the quartz reefs of Bendigo.. He recognised his true vocation, and, in 1854, he returned with renewed energy to his fields, which he thenceforth cultivated increasingly. In the meantime the colony was passing through an extraordinary crisis. The result of the outbreak of the goldfields was a veritable national fever. In 1851, the value of the gold raised was £580,548. This of itself, poured into a community of less than 100,000 souls, must have had some effect in disturbing values; but when, in 1852, it rose to nearly £11,000,000, the effect of the gold yield must have been to upset all ordinary calculations. Population poured in, and the increase of numbers from the excess of immigration over emigration from 1852 to 1855 was at the rate of 50,000 per annum. These would mostly consist of adult males, and the probability is that a sensible percentage of them would have some knowledge of farming. At all events, in 1855 a marked and sudden increase took place in the area of land under cultivation, as compared with the previous year, the returns being: 1854 ... ... ... 54,905 acres. 115,135 From this point it may be advantageous to study the phenomena of agricultural settlement, as revealed in Hayter's Statistics, to which source I am indebted for nearly all the figures bearing upon the subject. Statistics are not always infallible, as they are so easily manipulated, and almost any figures can be made to bring out almost any result by a judicious heighten ing on the one hand and suppression on the other, of facts, telling for or against a preconceived theory; but if they are honestly handled, and the generalisations are taken from a wide enough basis, statistics are invaluable in arriving at the truth. Concealed in a mass of generalities are the fates of individuals. The dry array of figures which the statistician elaborates from various and remote sources are but the aggregate of living entities. Dramas of success and defeat, of life and death, of joy and of despair are enshrined in the harmless looking symbols which contain the crystallised records of a nation's work. If we cannot extract the moral from such careful and invaluable statistics as Mr. Hayter supplies us with, it will not be from want of matter, but from a “plentiful lack of wit." A glance at the statistical summary for 1879-80 will show that agricultural settlement progressed uniformly and steadily, with the exception of the two years already mentioned-1852-53, when the profitable use of farmers' teams in carting to the diggings evidently affected the area of land under cultivation. From 1854 to 1863, inclusive, the area under cultivation was extended year by year, averaging throughout that period an increase of 25 per cent. for each year upon its predecessor. The last four years of the decade, however, were considerably below the average-these years only showing an increase of 63 per cent. In reviewing the gradual extension of cultivation under normal conditions, we must make an allowance for a phenomenal year, like 1864, when the land under cultivation, instead of increasing as usual, actually fell off 5 per cent. This decrease may be accounted for by the failure of the wheat crop, from rust, in 1863-4 and 1864-5. Two bad seasons in succession would, no doubt, cripple the farmers as well as discourage them; but it is not on record that they went whining to the Treasury for a subsidy or an alteration in the tariff by which to retrieve their broken fortunes at the expense of their neighbours. On the contrary, we find, after the partial collapse of 1864, that in the following year the farmers have more land under cultivation than ever— the return for 1865 being 530,196 acres as against 479,463 acres for the year preceding. From 1865 to 1869 the increase averaged 111 per cent. per annum; and in the last year of that term, viz., 1869, the land under cultivation is returned as 827,534 acres. The harvest of 1870 was a very bad one, the returns for wheat being only 2,870,409 bushels as against 5,699,056 for 1869, equivalent to a falling-off of 50 per cent.—although the area under wheat, for the former year, had only declined 4347 acres, or 11⁄2 per cent. on that of 1869. The farmers are, however, not easily discouraged—or, perhaps, they are bound to the soil by such strong ties that they cannot help themselves—and although the area under wheat for 1872, 1874 and 1875 shows a slight falling-off, from the previous year, in each case, the total area under cultivation steadily increased during the whole time. The moral to be deduced from all this is, that the success of farming in Victoria, as elsewhere, depends entirely upon physical causes; and that the political "heathens rage and the people imagine a vain thing," when they talk of "assisting the farmers " by prohibitory imposts upon imported breadstuffs or feeding grains. But while imbecile legislators are powerless for good, their ignorant interference is potent for evil. While no amount of stump oratory can increase the rainfall, or raise the price of wheat in the London market, ravenous attacks upon helpless sections of the community and malignant peans upon the blessings of legalised robbery can do much to dry up the springs of prosperity. An obstructive section of the ultra-radicals can help to raise freights by hampering the freedom of commerce, and by throwing obstacles in the way of the Harbour Trust. A speech in the House from Mr. Longmore, who appears to be the mouthpiece of the Victorian "mountain "-in which he blasphemously asserts that "the Lord had delivered the landholders into the hands" of the ultra-reds of the Reform League-has some effect in checking slowly-recovering confidence; and when such men not only talk of getting "their hands upon the throat of capital," but actually do rob the country districts, directly and indirectly, of millions, to squander it in the towns upon various pretexts, it is no wonder that country lands decrease in value, and the ordinary facilities for borrowing disappear. Until the farmers realise that no country can be prosperous under the guidance of ignorant and malignant fanatics, there will be no improvement in the political position. Until the farmers are also seized of the fact that the prosperity of the dense populations of Europe is a principal factor in determining the price of wheat at Horsham or Murtoa, they will fail to see through the shallow sophistry which seeks to bolster up the stupid system of trade restriction by pointing to an imaginary falling-off of English and continental exports as something gratifying to Victorian farmers. It is, perhaps, doubtful whether the State can make men virtuous by Act of Parliament; but it is very certain that the State is powerless to make farming profitable by a similar process. If farming, or rather wheat-growing, in Victoria pays, it will certainly be in spite of legislation. It has been the dream of successive Parliaments to plant a yeomanry upon the soil, and the men of which these Parliaments have been successively composed, have been greatly daring in their visionary speculations of Arcadian happiness. They have been profuse in their easy promises of impossible things, and have, unfortunately, drowned the common sense of selectors in the overflowing slops of their turgid eloquence. Men who were totally unfitted by nature and education for the toil and drudgery of the farm, have left the shop, and counting-house, and desk, and, with the savings of half a lifetime in their hands, have gone into the wilderness to make their fortunes by growing wheat. That some of these men have not committed suicide, is the best evidence that they are on the land yet; and if their families are not starving, we may congratulate ourselves on the partial success of our land policy. But whether the State is justified or not in endeavouring to direct the energies of a part or the whole of its population into definite channels, it is certainly bound to remove all artificial obstructions from the path of its neophytes. If we are to grow wheat at a profit, we must have no artificial restrictions, which tend to enhance the cost of production, or which lower the exchangeable value of our produce when brought to market. We are already producing more wheat than we can consume, and a large proportion of our farming population are committed to a mode of life which demands the obliteration of all artificial obstruction between the producers of Victoria and the consumers of Europe. In paragraph 737 of the Victorian Year Book for 1879-80, Mr. Hayter says: "Of every thousand acres cultivated during the past season, 419 acres were placed under wheat; 99 under oats; 26 under barley; 25 under potatoes; 119 under hay; 181 under green forage; and 131 under other crops. The tendency of late years has been to crop a larger extent of land, relatively to the whole area under tillage, with wheat, and a smaller extent with the remaining crops." The obvious inference to be drawn from the above is that the farmer has already filled up the local market with the produce for which he can only command a local consumption, and that he relies upon exportation to relieve him of his surplus wheat. Every outside market is consequently of importance to the farmer, and yet we find the men in power doing all they can to destroy the intercolonial trade by every kind of vexatious interference with its natural development. As for our foreign trade, every indication of its decrease is received with a cry of jubilation as if it were a blessed consummation to have ships coming here in ballast to take away our surplus wheat, with the certainty of having to pay so much extra for freight in consequence. I have before me a circular of Messrs. Dennys, Lascelles and Co., from which I quote the following: "We also give particulars of the colonial charges from Murtoa to London, and the English charges, by which it will be seen that the total cost of shipping, including carriage from Murtoa, is 2s. per bushel of 62lbs., when freight is 40s. per ton, and that when the value of wheat in London is 47s. 6d., a fair price for wheat at Murtoa will be 3s. 10d. per bushel of 621b., or 3s. 9d. per colonial bushel of 60lb., bags included." As the bags will cost about 2d. per bushel, according to the above, the farmer at Murtoa cannot expect more than 3s. 7d. per bushel for his grain on the ground. As freights, however, sometimes reach 60s. per ton, he will probably have to be contented sometimes with 3s. 3d. per bushel. The average yield for the last three years throughout the entire colony, was 11:48 bushels per acre; and it will be seen that, accordingly as the freight is 40s. or 60s. per ton, |