No arrangement prior to leaving England having been made by the emigrants to ensure the advantages of co-operation on the part of their friends at home, and among themselves in the colony, each depended on his own energy and resources for his success; and the foregoing description of many of the original settlers will account for the disappointments that ensued in various instances.

Few who abandoned the settlement under such circumstances, were willing to admit their failure was the result of their own want of exertion, or their unfitness for the enterprise in which they had embarked; accordingly, wherever they went, and in their letters home, the blame was laid on the country.  Thus many of the evil reports respecting it, which were current at home and in the neighbouring colonies, may be traced to this source.

A prevalent cause of distress among the early settlers arose from their having generally brought out with them little ready money, compared with their other property.  This was chiefly owing to the Government regulations admitting of land being assigned to those only who introduced labourers, and various kinds of property required by farmers.  Many of the settlers, therefore, to the extent of their means, were in this way amply provided; but having understood in England that money would be of little use in a new country, numbers, without questioning what they wished to be true, incautiously expended most of their means in the property that would entitle them to obtain land in the colony.  However, when they had been some time in the settlement, they discovered that there, as in other places, money was needful; and on wishing to procure some by the sale of part of their property, they found it difficult to do so without loss, in consequence of most other settlers having brought out similar investments.

Another cause of depression, which has borne seriously on the settlers, has been the occasional high price of the necessaries of life.  With a view of remedying this evil, cargoes of provisions have been repeatedly imported by the Local Government—­the actual cost alone being charged to the settler.  Even a shipload of bullocks and pigs was introduced from Java.  But, numbers of the bullocks and pigs getting loose, soon became as wild and difficult to recapture as if they had been natives of the woods, whither they had betaken themselves.

Experience has shown that the system of free grants, which was the first adopted in Western Australia, is decidedly injurious to the prosperity of a settlement, from the facility it affords to persons possessed of comparatively little capital to acquire extensive tracts of land, the greater part of which, for want of means, they cannot use for agricultural or pastoral purposes.  It also occasions the too wide dispersion of the settlers; thus necessarily increasing the expense of Government, and, at the same time, producing serious inconvenience to the farmer.