CHAP. XI

QUIT-RENTS

117

C. QUIT-RENTS.

Fortunately the matter of the quit-rents can be disposed of in a comparatively short space. It does not specially affect Victoria, but is interesting as part of the history of the land system.

It will be remembered that the quit-renters were persons who, in the days before the Land Acts, had received grants of Crown land in fee-simple, upon the condition of payment of a small annual quit-rent.1 One of the objects of the Government in making these grants had undoubtedly been to induce free settlers to undertake the management and employment of convicts, and thereby to relieve the Government of the cost of their maintenance. So long as the convict system lasted, the Government seems to have been very casual in demanding payment of the quit-rents; but when the system was abolished, the Crown considered itself entitled to demand the quit-rents from land which no longer saved expense to the Government. The quit-renters, on the other hand, complained that they were deprived of cheap labour just at the time when the demands on their pockets were increased. In some cases they refused to pay the quit-rents, and the question then became aggravated by the circumstance that the distresses levied by the Crown sometimes included stock not belonging to the owners of the land.

This practice was, of course, strictly in accordance with the law, but its adoption created some ill-feeling.

The matter appears not to have been of any serious extent. On the 12th August 1845 the Legislative Council carried an Address to the Governor for a return of seizures made in the previous twelve months.2 The return was promptly furnished, and it appeared that only nine seizures had been made, which had realised just £600.3 In six cases stock belonging to persons other than the owners of the land had been taken.

18th July 1849, and 19th January 1850. But they did not effect any substantial changes.

1 Cf. ante, p. 35. The term "quit-rents " (quieti reditus) was adopted, without much regard to propriety, from the old English manorial system, under which the tenant frequently compounded for his various labour and service dues by payment of an inclusive rent, and thereby became quit of further claims. 3 Ibid. p. 425.

2 Votes and Proceedings, 1845, p. 28.

Immediately upon the receipt of this return, the Council addressed the Governor requesting him to withdraw distress proceedings, pending the reply to the Crown Land Grievances Petition then before the Home government;1 but the Governor declined to take any step which might lead to the inference that he doubted the rights of the Crown.2

The petition alluded to by this Address is that presented in 1844 to accompany the report of the Crown Lands Grievance Committee. The report deals with the subject very briefly, resting its complaints principally on the facts that the extent to which the arrears had been allowed to accumulate had led purchasers to believe that they would never be demanded, and that the change in the convict system had deprived the quitrenters of cheap labour. It appears, by the evidence taken before the committee, that at the close of the year 1843 the annual sum receivable from quit-rents throughout the colony was slightly over £10,000, and that the arrears amounted to upwards of £55,000. The committee, in its report, pledges itself to the statement that "much of the land is not now worth the amount of quit-rent due." 5 But it is significant that the Colonial Treasurer, the chief witness examined on this subject, declines to be responsible for this view, remarking that no surrenders had been offered.

The report of the committee finally recommends that all arrears of more than six years' standing shall be abandoned, and large reductions made in the quit-rents on country lands.

8

9

The reply of the Home government to the Land Grievances Petition did not contain any special reference to the quit-rent clauses; but on the 9th October 1846 the Governor issued. Regulations which offered very liberal concessions. All lands upon which twenty years' quit-rents had been paid were to be thenceforth free, and those persons who had paid more than twenty years were to have the difference refunded. Holders upon whose lands twenty years' rent had not been paid were to be entitled to redemption upon completion of the twenty years,

1 Votes and Proceedings, 1845, p. 85.

3 Ibid. 1844, ii. p. 123, and ante, p. 98.

4 Votes and Proceedinys, 1844, ii. p. 218. 5 Ibid. p. 133.

8 Ibid. 1846, i. p. 59.

6 Ibid. p. 215.

2 Ibid. p. 98.

7 Ibid. p. 138. 9 Gov. Gazette (N. S. W.), sub date.

CHAP. XI CONCESSIONS BY THE GOVERNMENT

119

a substantial discount being offered to those who wished to redeem at once.

It appears that these Regulations were issued without instructions from the Home government, for when, at the close of the year 1847, the Governor was memorialised by the quit-renters for further reductions,' he at once expressed his inability to accede to the prayer of the memorial, on the ground that the Home government had disapproved of his previous concessions.2 The memorial in question is hardly creditable to its framers, in some at least of its clauses. It points out that the squatters beyond the boundaries pay a smaller rent per acre than the amount of quit-rent, and thence draws the inference that the quit-renters are placed at a disadvantage as compared with the squatters. It hardly needs a specialist to see that a mere temporary occupation of land in the wilderness is worth less than the fee-simple ownership of land in a settled district. And again, when the memorial states that the quitrent "applies almost exclusively to the purchasers of land to a large amount, the payment for which has been the chief means of promoting the immigration into the colony of shepherds and servants," it obviously means to suggest that the payment for the lands on which the quit-rents are charged has had this effect, whereas nothing beyond the quit-rents (and in many cases not even these) was ever paid to the Government for those lands.

4

In spite of the weakness of the case, however, the Legislative Council did not shrink from taking it up. On the 16th May 1848 it agreed to an Address, framed on the motion of Mr. Cowper, to be presented to the Crown, praying the absolute remission of all the quit-rents. In promising to forward the Address, the Governor repeated his former expression of belief that it would meet with little success at the hands of the Home government.

8

The Governor's predictions were amply justified by the despatch in answer to the petition, which was laid before the Council on the 4th July 1849.7 Earl Grey points out that the question is really between one particular class of settlers. and the whole community, for which the Crown, in the collection

and expenditure of the Land Fund, acts as trustee. He points out that the assignment of convict labour, so far from being a burden on the quit-renters for which compensation had to be offered, was a most eagerly coveted boon. While as to the comparative dearness of lands held under the highest quit-rent of twopence an acre, Earl Grey shows that in a colony where the minimum price of Crown land is £1 an acre, and the average interest on money ten per cent, the man who pays twopence a year for his acre gets his land at about a twelfth of the price paid by the man who gives a lump sum of £1 for it. The only cases which deserve consideration are those in which the grantees of land emigrated on the distinct faith of the Regulations of the Home government which promised the assignment of convict labour. Although these persons have had splendid bargains, they are entitled to all that the original improvidence of the Government promised them.

3

1

The latter promise was redeemed by a later despatch presented to the Council on the 21st August 1849,2 which authorises the Governor to remit the quit-rents to those persons who can prove that they emigrated on the faith of the Regulations of 1824, provided they have in all other respects fulfilled the terms of the Regulations. But there are to be no half measures. The claimant must go entirely by the Regulations upon which he founds his claim, or abandon it altogether.5

GENERAL

All these detailed grievances were, however, but indirect methods of approaching the real object of the Council, the acquisition of the control of the Land Fund. After many pre

liminary attempts, and much talk of a "compact" alleged to have been made between the Home and the Colonial governments, the demand was boldly formulated by Mr. Darvall in his Land and Immigration resolutions of the 2d August 1850,7 1 Ante, p. 34. Regulations of 1824.

4 Ante, p. 34.

2 Votes and Proceedings, 1849, i. 191. 3 Ibid. p. 488. 5 Another small item occurred in connection with so-called "quit-rents" at Parramatta and other towns in the years 1849-50. But these were really leasehold rents, and stood on a different footing. Cf. Vol. of Australian Papers, 18441850, in Melbourne Pub. Lib.

E.g. in the report of 1844 (Votes and Proceedings, 1844, ii. p. 134). 7 Ibid. 1850, i. 123.

CHAP. XI

"GRIEVANCES"

121

and by Mr. Wentworth in his comprehensive resolutions of grievances of the 27th of the same month.1 The latter, along with many other serious charges, assert-"That in the opinion of this House, the Imperial Act, 5 & 6 Vic. c. 36, which places the management of the lands of the Colony, and the appropriation of the revenues thence arising, beyond the control of this House, is a grievance; that inasmuch as the whole value of these lands has been imparted to them by the settlement of the Colonists, and by the labour and capital which they have expended upon them, and that the value consequently belongs to the whole Colony, it follows that the entire revenues thence arising, whether by sale or rent, ought of right to form part of the Ordinary Revenue, and to be subject to the sole control and appropriation of the Local Legislature."

We shall see what response this challenge met with in the new Constitution.

1 Votes and Proceedings, 1850, i. p. 209.