169), and was rapidly outgrowing it. Australia, however, did not pass
out of the crown colony stage, in which affairs are controlled by a
governor, with or without the assistance of a nominated legislative
council, until 1842, when elected members were added to the council of
New South Wales, and it was given the power of the purse. This
development was due to the exodus of the surplus population, created by
the Industrial Revolution, from Great Britain, which began soon after
1820, and affected Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
Various companies and associations were founded under the influence of
Lord Durham, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and others, for the purpose of
settling labourers in these lands. Between 1820 and 1830 several
settlements were established in Western Australia, in 1836 South
Australia was colonized, and gradually Victoria, Queensland, and
Tasmania were organized as independent colonies out of offshoots from
the parent New South Wales. Each in turn received a representative
assembly, and developed individual characteristics.
Cape Colony followed on similar lines, variegated by the presence of a
rival European race, the Dutch. Slowly, in the generation which
succeeded the British conquest, they accumulated grievances against
their rulers. English was made the sole official language; Dutch
magistrates were superseded by English commissioners; slavery was
abolished, with inadequate compensation to the owners; little support
was given them in their wars with the natives, which the home
government and the missionaries, more interested in the woes of negroes
in South Africa than in those of children in British mines and
factories, attributed to Dutch brutality; and a Hottentot police was
actually established.
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