Identifier: davidsymefathero00prat (find matches)
Title: David Syme, the father of protection in Australia
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Pratt, Ambrose, 1874-1944 Deakin, Alfred, 1856-1919
Subjects: Syme, David, 1827-1908 Tariff -- Australia Victoria History Victoria -- Politics and government
Publisher: London (etc.) : Ward, Lock & Co., Ltd.
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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standard History of New South Wales, in a letter tothe London Daily News, published in the year 1854,observed :— People will tell those going to Victoria thatif they do not succeed at the diggings they canprocure situations as clerks, shopmen, storekeepers,etc., but there is not one situation of these kinds fortwenty who may wish to take them. They will nextbe told that they may take to pastoral pursuits.They must do so, however, either as masters or asmen. In the one case they will find that every acreof land in Victoria is part of somebodys sheepstation or cattle run ; and that in order to get intothat sort of occupation at all, they must purchasethe entire stock and station of some actual squatterwho may be willing to sell out; and this may not bedone for less than thousands of pounds, which willprobably be altogether beyond the means of the greatmajority of immigrants. William Howitt in his book, Two Years in Victoria,remarks :— If we had been told of a nation of lunatics, who
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David Syme, 1856. (Page 69 THE LAND STRUGGLE 69 had a splendid extent of rich and pleasant country,which they were anxious to populate as speedily aspossible, and who, while they sent over the wholeworld the most bewitching descriptions of its charmsand its fertility, steadily refused, on the arrival ofthe people they wanted, to sell them a yard of it, tosettle and farm on, we should say it was very lunatic-ally correct and should enjoy our laugh at theirinsanity. But to admit that this nation is a nationof Englishmen, and that such a government is theGovernment of our colony of Victoria, is naturallya concession which makes us look very foolish anddreadfully ashamed of our countrymen in office ;especially when we cast our eyes across the Atlanticand see how wide awake our relatives there are tothis folly and how immensely they are profiting byit. They are drawing daily from us the sinewsof a gigantic empire, which, in Australia, we arerepelling by all the force of idiotic folly. Howi

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