THE SUPPLY OF WOOL, IRELAND AND AUSTRALIA 649
as the first of the class; he obtained from Government a grant AD 8
of a conditional right to use 5000 acres for pasturing sheep’, ’
and settled down on the Nepean River. He had failed in
obtaining the use of British capital for his enterprise, but he
had done not a little to stir up public interest in England, and
he certainly laid the foundation of the wool trade on which
the prosperity of Australia has been built up. The example
which had been set was speedily followed, and the terms of
Captain Macarthur’s grant laid down the lines of the system
ander which sheep-farming was gradually developed.
Some time elapsed before the supply of Australian wool but this
was sufficient in quantity, or adequate in quality, to cause any not avad.
serious difference in the prospects of the English cloth manu- ob pr
facture. The importation in 1820 was about 190,000 lbs., in deat
1826 it was over 1,000,000, and in 1828 it was estimated at
double that quantity? After the introduction of the Saxon
breeds into New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, there
was an extraordinary improvement in the wool obtained, both
as to fineness of texture and softness of quality, and a mer-
chant could predict that, within fifteen or twenty years,
England would be independent of supplies from Spain and
Germany®. The new source of material had come to be of
the utmost importance in the thirties, when the struggle tl after
between hand-weaving and power-weaving was being fought lution, -
out. But the intervention of machine spinning took place ¥*"*™
in the woollen trade at a time when expansion was im-
practicable, because of the limitation in the supply of
material.
252. The manufacture of woollen cloth involved an im-
mense number of separate processes, which are enumerated
in Mr Miles’ Report on the condition of the hand-loom
Orders in Council appeared which divided the waste lands of Australia into three
slasses, and gave the squatters much greater security of tenure than they had
hitherto enjoyed. On the settled lands, which were available for purchase, the
squatter had only a yearly tenure; on the intermediate lands, he was allowed an
sight years’ lease; while on the unsettled lands he might obtain a lease for fourteen
years, at the rent of £10 for every 4000 sheep in his flocks (ib. 109). The very
form of these orders shows how completely English ideas on the subject had
hanged since Macarthur first approached the Government or the subject in 1803.
Bonwick, 81. 2 Mr Donaldson’s evidence, Reports, 1828, vim. 425.
Mr Hughes’ evidence, Reports, 1828, vi. 400.
Reports, 1840, xxv. 389, printed pag. 369.
