Peopling a new colony: Henry Jordan, land orders, and Queensland immigration, 1861–7


 This article analyses the first years of the land order system of immigration that dominated Queensland’s settlement as a colony. Queensland issued land orders worth £30 per adult to fare-paying British and Irish immigrants who were mechanics, agriculturalists and people with modest amounts of capital. This form of immigration was facilitated through the work of an Emigration Commissioner – later an Agent-General – based in the British Isles. Henry Jordan held these positions in the period 1861–6. The article argues that land orders only partly met their intended outcomes, but that Jordan’s activities were essential for the scheme’s limited success.

In 1856 squatters in Moreton Bay, the Darling Downs and the northern districts of New South Wales lobbied the Colonial Office for separation, arguing that the New South Wales government had neglected their interests. The Colonial Office agreed, and Queensland and New South Wales were separated in December 1859. Immediately, Queensland began an immigration policy to populate a new colony and exploit its vast landmass and natural resources. 1 Queensland was twelve times larger than England. With an area of 1,727,000 square kilometres (22.5 per cent of the Australian continent) and a meagre population in 1861 of 30,059 non-Aboriginal people, Queensland had only one white settler for every fifty kilometres of land. 2 The colony's first governor, George Ferguson Bowen, and Premier, Robert George Wyndham Herbert, advocated vigorous immigration growth, seeking, as Herbert put it, a 'stream of Immigration … as certain and as large as possible'. 3 Along with other Australian colonies, Queensland began to direct immigration recruitment from London. 4 The Colonial Secretary in Brisbane, on behalf of the colony's government, managed immigration to Queensland along with an Emigration Commissioner and, later, an Agent-General based in London. 5 With the number of English, Irish and Scottish immigrants easily outstripping that of German, to a new destination far away from home, an undertaking that was potentially expensive both for the immigrant and for the receiving colony.
Emigrants from the British Isles had many possible destinations where they could settle in the anglophone world. In the Australian colonies campaigns to 'unlock the land' flourished after the end of the gold rush era c.1860, as individual colonies realized that further demographic and economic expansion depended on opportunities for land ownership. 15 An agrarian ideal of small yeomen farms was favoured by Australian politicians as the preferred type of cultivation, and was dependent on a stream of immigrants. 16 In the face of this competitive situation among colonies, land orders were seen as attractive inducements to persuade such people to settle in Queensland rather than elsewhere in Australia or the world. Between 1861 and 1897 land orders worth £1,032,924 were negotiated by Queensland's government. New South Wales and Victoria, as already established colonies, did not use the land order system because their land laws already offered inducements to potential settlers and so there was no need to make a free gift of land. 17 Land orders lay at the heart of colonial Queensland's immigration policies. 18 This article investigates the operation of land orders in relation to immigration to Queensland between 1861 and 1866, after which the scheme ceased for two years. Some 52,484 British and Irish passengers embarked for Queensland in that period. 19 The policies advocated by Queensland's government are analysed in conjunction with the practical stratagems and bureaucratic processes deployed to promote the land order system in the British Isles. The latter is investigated through an examination of the efforts of Henry Jordan, aged forty-two in 1860, who served as Queensland's first Emigration Commissioner and Agent-General in London from 1861. The analysis shows that emigration to Queensland in the late nineteenth century depended not only on a fruitful liaison between authorities in Brisbane and the Agent-General in London but also on proactive decisions by that agent. Giving considerable autonomy to agents was the only effective way to co-ordinate the recruitment of emigrants in the British Isles, given Australia's extraordinary isolation from the metropolis. 20 The English-born Jordan had been a dentist and Wesleyan missionary before arriving in Brisbane in 1856. 21 Representing Brisbane in Queensland's first legislative assembly (May to November 1860), he was closely involved with parliamentary discussions over the Unoccupied Crown Lands Occupation Bill in 1860 and was part of the select committee that devised the land order system of immigration that came into effect in January 1861. 22 He was also involved in the Australian Mortgage, Land and Finance Company, which carried on much business in Queensland's pastoral economy. 23 Jordan later sat in Queensland's legislative assembly as the member for East Moreton (1868-71), and was registrar general (1875-83) and subsequently in charge of the Lands Department. 24 Jordan has attracted some scholarly attention, focusing mainly on his lecturing in the British Isles, but his strong influence on the changing regulations for the land order system of immigration has not been assessed in detail. 25 I argue that Jordan's almost single-handed control of the issue of land orders in the British Isles, and his recognition of the changes needed to improve this system of immigration, were vital to the flow of migrants to Queensland.
Queensland's parliament had the power to enact laws dealing with all Crown lands in the colony. 26 Immigration policies were closely connected to these laws. The substance of the land order system was contained in an address that Jordan delivered to the electors of North Brisbane before the first Queensland parliament, which was assembled and printed as a pamphlet in 1860. 27 The land order system of immigration was initially incorporated in Queensland's Crown Lands Alienation Act of September 1860 (especially clause 20) rather than in discrete immigration legislation. Its aim was 'to increase the population and prosperity of this colony beyond the limits attainable under any other scheme of immigration'. 28 It planned to achieve this goal by recruiting industrious settlers to farm the colony without providing travel subsidies. Queensland had vast agricultural potential. Since the colony was far less urbanized than New South Wales or Victoria, land was its greatest asset. Each full-paying adult was entitled to receive an £18 warrant for a land order, issued at Queensland's Emigration Office at 17 Gracechurch Street, London. An £18 voucher could be claimed for two children aged between four and twelve. A further £12 land order was awarded after two years' residence in Queensland. Making all members of a family eligible for land orders was a considerable inducement for prospective immigrants. Vouchers for the land orders, however, could be negotiated only as cash; they were not connected to allotments and could not be redeemed for land. The underlying principle in issuing the warrants was that they would be used to purchase land at the rate of £1 per acre. 29 The Crown Lands Alienation Act included provisions that allowed for an unlimited amount of land on agricultural reserves. 30 The quantity of land in each reserve was to be kept 5,000 acres ahead of demand, while tenancy terms were easy. The reserves were open for selection in blocks of 40 to 320 acres, and it was a requirement that they should not be auctioned but occupied and improved. 31 These reserves, controlled by the 23  government, were situated mainly in coastal areas between Moreton Bay (Brisbane) and Port Curtis (Gladstone). 32 Immigrants had an unfettered choice of land offered by the Queensland government anywhere in the colony. 33 The intention was to avoid settlers ending up with useless acreage. 34 This was to be the principal means of attracting people to settle in Queensland. 35 Land orders were the only form of government assistance offered to immigrants arriving in the colony because emigrants paid for their own ship passage. 36 The Crown Lands Alienation Act of 1860 provided for the settlement of an agricultural population. 37 It was not meant to facilitate pauper emigration; the intention was to attract a class of small capitalists and skilled labourers capable of flourishing as freeholders and small tenant farmers. 38 'The principle of our scheme', Jordan wrote, 'is the appropriation of a considerable portion of our land revenue to the introduction of labor of a particular description, and of persons who will bring the requisite means and qualifications to develop especially the great agricultural and pastoral resources of the colony'. 39 Certainly, Queensland's land order system for securing immigration was innovative. Other pre-1860 schemes had funded immigration on Edward Gibbon Wakefield's model by selling Crown land first and using the proceeds to pay for the importation of labour. Queensland, by contrast, offered the land itself as a direct inducement. This policy was intended to distinguish Queensland in a highly competitive emigration market, particularly necessary as the colony was a remote outpost of the anglophone world, more expensive to reach and less developed than other Australian colonies, including its immediate neighbours. Land orders were crafted to persuade emigrants to overlook these disincentives, and, as the discussion below indicates, to some degree they worked. 40 Between late April 1861 and 1863, when Jordan served as Emigration Commissioner for Queensland in the British Isles, 4,160 land orders were issued to 8,470.5 adults, worth £152,469. 41 Nine out of every ten immigrants to Queensland were processed by Jordan and his handful of assistants at the Queensland Government Emigration Office. 42 Jordan was a conscientious agent who knew what he was selling. He had taken a role in crafting the land order policy as a member of the Select Committee on Immigration in Queensland's first parliament, and had inspected agricultural reserves at Warwick, Drayton and Toowoomba to confirm that good land was available. He also planned and conducted an ambitious series of recruitment lectures in Britain and Ireland. 43 Appearing in village halls, market and county towns, and larger urban centres, he delivered 192 lectures before a total of 161,200 people, explaining the land order system in detail and encouraging people to emigrate. Jordan despatched ships carrying 35,725 persons. His job was to implement the land order scheme as the public servant entrusted with the recruitment of migrants. No land orders could be issued in the colony: Jordan was the sole arbiter, with Queensland officials completely dependent on his decisions, observance and suggested adaptations of the rules. 44 One of the first initiatives relating to the issue of land orders for Queensland soon ran into difficulties. Clause 21 of the Crown Lands Alienation Act allowed for cotton growing to be undertaken by those who had land orders. 45 In 1861 Jordan, following Lang's ideas, published a pamphlet that outlined a case for cotton cultivation in Queensland based on immigrants taking up land orders to settle in the colony. 46 In his lectures Jordan discussed the potential for cotton production in Queensland, but this was only temporarily implemented. 47 The Queensland government was initially keen to promote this form of emigration, and it authorized Jordan to spend £16,000 in passage money to assist 1,000 unemployed Lancashire cotton operatives to emigrate to Queensland. 48 Jordan was confident he could recruit these labourers. 49 Nevertheless, cotton was not developed on a large scale in Queensland because, rather than using British and Irish immigrants with land orders, it required cheap labour from Asia to cover the costs involved, a solution Queensland avoided because of its emphasis on a white immigration policy. 50 In addition, weeds, drought, poor management of cotton lands, and lack of enthusiasm and support from British businessmen in the cotton industry were further problems. 51 Owing to the American Civil War (1861-5), a number of underemployed Lancashire cotton workers decided to emigrate to Queensland rather than to the U.S.A. 52 In the first three months of 1863, Jordan sent out 1,300 cotton operatives to Queensland as a charitable measure in accordance with instructions from the colonial government. The passage money for this group of migrants, as explained above, was underwritten by the Queensland government in contradiction of the dictum that those in receipt of land orders should pay their own passage money. But though this meant Jordan had to overlook suitable prospective emigrants eligible for land orders, who were kept waiting, he still received complaints from the colony that he had despatched a poor class of persons. The recruitment of cotton operatives was discontinued in 1864, and thereafter  Jordan could concentrate on sending out migrants who were better qualified for land orders. 53 Queensland was willing to subsidize migrants to a greater degree than other Australian colonies in the forty years before Federation. 54 However, the land order system of immigration was not wholly successful or uniformly supported. One difficulty was the failure to increase significantly the amount of cultivated land owing to the poor soil quality of many agricultural reserves. 55 A contributor to the Brisbane Courier suspected that Queensland's government had no good land available for immigrants within easy, inexpensive reach of its ports. 56 The author of an article in the Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser feared that land provision would not match the demands of frequent arrivals of immigrants, who might find it difficult to locate a suitable homestead. 57 Though the legislature expected that immigration under the land order system would promote agricultural settlement, it also made land orders available for the purchase of town lots and suburban allotments. Town lots were not in areas suitable for the pursuit of agriculture, and all the suburban allotments of Queensland had room for only a very limited number of farmers, even if they were -and the majority were notsuitable for agricultural occupation. 58 The land order system lacked any mechanism to regulate the equilibrium between the supply of, and demand for, immigrant labour. Numbers of immigrants taking out land orders fluctuated from year to year, depending on economic conditions in the British Isles, and the migrant flow was not regulated closely according to changing labour demands in Queensland. 59 Some critics thought the system favoured unskilled labour at the expense of skilled workers, arguing that this deterred emigrants who could bring money to Queensland. 60 This particular criticism, however, appears to have been a red herring. Jordan reported that the land order system attracted small capitalists but that 'the labouring class are comparatively indifferent about them, and would, in almost all cases, gladly forego any claim to them for the sake of a reduction of a few pounds in the cost of the passage money of the family to the Colony'. 61 The scheme was also undermined by various unforeseen practices, as land orders changed hands in ways that were neither envisaged nor desired. The emergence of a vibrant, secondary market for land orders proved to be a major flaw in the scheme. In theory, it partly mitigated many migrants' reluctance to convert their land orders into settlement on the land. Yet Queensland's government refused to accept the emergence of a secondary land market, believing it compromised the attempt to channel migrants into agricultural work. Many recently arrived immigrants (especially poorer ones) sold their land orders for their market value in cash or surrendered them to benefactors in Queensland, thereby defeating the intention that such orders would promote agricultural 53  settlement. 62 The scheme quickly became 'a negotiable money order arrangement for the benefit of ship owners and capitalists'. 63 Some immigrants were deceived in Queensland by buyers and sellers of land orders. These people regulated the price of land orders by advertising them in newspapers at a lower price than the £15 or £16 minimum that the immigrant ought to have received for his or her warrant. Premier Herbert held the view that most immigrants with land orders originally intended to settle on the land, but found, on arrival in Queensland, that the warrants were a matter of bargain and sale. 64 An article in the Brisbane Courier (30 September 1862) referred to widespread speculation in land orders as an example of various parties who had immoderately invested their capital in the government's paper money. It was alleged that among their number were those who had arrived as immigrants in Queensland who moved on to settle in the rival colony of New South Wales, where there was more land available for free selection before survey, larger and more numerous markets for agricultural produce, and more opportunities for paid labour. 65 Jordan had to tackle the difficult task of steering clear of sharp practices by third parties. 'It has been the most difficult part of my duty to guard against the introduction of a class of persons not strictly eligible', he noted, 'for whom others introducing them claim the land orders'. 66 The land order scheme, it was also claimed, reduced government land sale revenues. By 1863 the Queensland government found it was increasing the issue of land orders but receiving reduced receipts from the sale of Crown lands. 67 Squatters, such as those on the Darling Downs who were mainly owner-manager pastoralists, frequently purchased land orders; they used them to buy valuable portions of their sheep runs according to the pre-emptive rights attached to their rented land under Queensland's Pastoral Leases Act (1863). 68 Middlemen were also actively engaged in purchasing land orders, buying them at discounted prices and reselling them above market value. 69 Persons 'of every distinction and trade', it was claimed, looked forward to the arrival of successive groups of immigrants with 'mercenary anticipation'. 70 In 1863 the Black Ball Line, which held a monopoly on the shipment of migrants to Queensland, acquired land orders worth £40,000 purchased from labourers as a way of monetizing their warrants. However, it failed to sell this amount of land orders to a relatively small market, and had to request the government to buy back £25,000 worth of land orders at £15 each when it could not find buyers. 71 Practical difficulties in the use of land orders needed close attention and reform to make the immigration system work successfully for Queensland. Jordan quickly rectified defects in the original regulations. In 1862 Jordan persuaded Queensland's government to accept a new category of assisted emigrants who would pay between £2 and £8 towards their passage money. The land orders of these part-paying passengers were handed over to the shipping company's representatives on arrival in Brisbane. 72 From 1862 Jordan also insisted that shippers could claim land orders for immigrants only after filling out a form issued by the Queensland Emigration Office in London demonstrating that immigrants held eligible occupations. Unskilled mechanics, domestic servants or labourers were preferred. The category of labourers deemed eligible included miners, quarrymen, gardeners, road-makers and others connected in some way with the land. Skilled mechanics such as machinists, engineers, painters, printers and compositors were excluded from receiving land orders whereas others, including blacksmiths, bricklayers, masons, sawyers, carpenters, wheelwrights and shipbuilders, were entitled to land orders. 73 In 1862 Jordan also improved the administrative arrangements underpinning the immigration scheme. There was no regular service of ships between England and Queensland when he arrived in London: Melbourne and Sydney were served by shipping lines, but not Brisbane. Jordan had to find a shipping line that would carry immigrants without prepayment but by the land orders it received on landing them in Brisbane. 74 He considered that the scheme could flourish only if handled by one shipping firm, and arrangements were made with the Black Ball Line to take immigrants to Queensland on this basis. The owners, James Baines & Co. of Liverpool and T. M. Mackay, who maintained a London office, had experience in taking passengers to Victoria during the 1850s. This firm was the only one willing to accept land orders in lieu of providing a free passage to emigrants. Jordan screened all free passengers to ensure no undesirable people could reach Queensland. The Black Ball Line's service to Queensland began early in 1862. 75 Between then and 1866 Jordan liaised with the Line to send eighty-eight vessels with immigrants to Queensland's ports. 76 For their services, the shippers received a land order for each subsidized adult landed in the colony and nominal payment, though, as noted, devaluation of land orders caused the company considerable financial difficulties. 77 Even as Jordan made these improvements, a new controversy erupted over the recruitment of Irish emigrants under the scheme. James Quinn, the first Roman Catholic bishop of Brisbane, founded the Queensland Immigration Society (Q.I.S.) in 1862 to recruit impoverished Irish emigrants through the land order scheme. The instigator of the Q.I.S. was Father Patrick Dunne, who had worked in the Australian colonies for several years. He convinced Quinn to become its sponsor. Quinn, in turn, recruited his brother the Reverend Dr. Matthew Quinn to act on behalf of the Society in Ireland when Patrick Dunne was travelling or in Queensland. Much of the society's administrative work in Ireland was undertaken by Father Robert Dunne -no relation to Patrick Dunne -who had worked as diocesan secretary to Bishop Quinn. 78 The Q.I.S. was intended to alleviate the misery of evictions and famine in Ireland and to supplement, but not supersede, the Queensland government immigration. It provided free passage for paupers who, on arrival, would be eligible for land orders 72 Coghlan, Labour and Industry in Australia, iv. 929. 73  from the Queensland government. 79 Quinn also wanted to secure protection for single female emigrants. 80 Father Robert Dunne organized twelve ships that brought 4,000 emigrants to the colony, causing a surge in Irish migration to Queensland. 81 Recruits came from midland Irish counties stretching from Clare and Limerick to Kilkenny and from counties bordering Ulster, including Fermanagh and Cavan. A large contingent was attracted from King's County, Offaly. 82 The Q.I.S. scheme damaged the operation of the land order system of immigration. Bishop Quinn's scheme met with numerous criticisms, notably by newspaper editors in Queensland who opposed, on sectarian grounds, the introduction of significant numbers of Catholics into what they termed 'Quinnsland'. 83 There was a fear that Quinn was aiming to create a Roman Catholic colony in Australia. 84 Some agents of the Q.I.S. had approached poorer Irish migrants by offering them reduced ship passages for £8 or £10 per head if they signed over their land orders. The same agents sometimes refused to issue land orders to Irish passengers who paid the full shipping fare. 85 The Colonial Secretary's Office, and Jordan in London, criticized these deviations from the intentions of the Crown Lands Alienation Act. 86 The Q.I.S., for its part, challenged Jordan's actions. He was charged with neglecting Irish immigration at a time of widespread destitution, and of wanting to frustrate Irish emigration owing to his dislike of an attempt by the Q.I.S. to cut across his oversight of land orders in the British Isles. 87 He was also accused by some people of wanting to prevent Roman Catholic emigration to Queensland for sectarian reasons. Neither of these charges was substantiated. 88 Though Jordan and Herbert worried that such criticisms would stir up political trouble among Brisbane Catholics, matters never came to a head. 89 A well-informed observer in Brisbane thought the Queensland government was strong enough to 'completely annihilate the Queensland Immigration Society'. 90 The conflict galvanized the Queensland government to bolster Jordan's authority even further. Premier and Colonial Secretary Herbert rejected Quinn's request that the Q.I.S. be made the official immigration agent in Ireland. 91 In March 1863 Herbert decided that, with immediate effect, land orders for prospective Irish immigrants could be approved only by the Queensland Emigration Office in London: agents of the Q.I.S. would be no longer able to authorize the issue of warrants. Moreover, that office, under Jordan's leadership, was given sole authority 'to receive money from persons desiring to emigrate, and grant them passages with or without a land order on arrival, according to the amount paid by them for their passage'. 92 Certificates with details of the immigrant's claim to a land order required Jordan's signature, without which an immigrant's land order would not be accepted in Queensland. 93 Further procedures were introduced to eradicate the practices of the Q.I.S. The Colonial Secretary's Office instituted new checks to ensure warrant holders were entitled to their land order claim. In particular, claimants' ages were verified and, if necessary, Jordan was contacted to supply a baptismal certificate from the person's relatives. Government immigration agents in Brisbane discovered many instances where discrepancies in the documentation were supplied. In such cases, no land order was issued. 94 Additional checks were implemented to weed out fraudulent claims. From the beginning of 1863, all intermediate and steerage passengers were required to sign a declaration that they had not forfeited their land orders to speculators. The declarations were checked by Jordan at his London office. This additional bureaucratic procedure was introduced specifically to prevent further lax disposal of the land orders by the Q.I.S. 95 In the autumn of 1862 Jordan arranged for land order regulations to be altered to ensure that only emigrants selected by him would be allowed to sail for Queensland from Ireland and that each migrant should sign a form stating that it would not be transferred to another person. 96 Jordan adopted the principle of refusing land orders to people whose whole passage had not been paid for them. 97 He was backed up by the Queensland government, which decided that the operations of the Q.I.S. were incompatible with direct supervision by Jordan: as the colony's representative in the British Isles, he alone could ensure that funds associated with immigration were properly administered. The government decision of March 1863 to accept only land orders issued by Jordan in London led to a decline in the activities of the Q.I.S. 98 Relations between Jordan and Herbert were rarely cordial. 99 Herbert and some of his parliamentary colleagues thought Jordan was pedalling rosy propaganda to prospective emigrants about employment opportunities in Queensland. Jordan complained, however, that he was kept uninformed about changes being made in the colony to immigration regulations and the land order system. 100 Jordan had detailed discussions with Herbert about the efficacy of the scheme when the Colonial Secretary visited London in 1863. Herbert preferred the emigration system overseen by the C.L.E.C. in London, thinking it was more orderly and better able to provide Queensland with more suitable settlers. 101 Jordan took the opposite view. Without the land order system, he argued, large numbers of emigrants who might take up its provisions to establish farms in Queensland would not do so, which would induce them, along with other small capitalists, to abandon plans to emigrate to the colony. The land order system of immigration was relatively novel and therefore unlikely to operate perfectly before a period when it could be tried and tested. 102 Yet all that the Queensland government had to provide to attract immigrants comprised relatively small plots of land in return for the land orders issued. 103 Jordan's view that the land order system of immigration helped Queensland to stand out among the variety of schemes enticing British and Irish emigrants to settle in the Americas or other parts of Australia was supported in Queensland government publications, which backed the operation of land orders. 104 Thus the Queensland Statistical Register in 1862 claimed that land orders have 'been most successful in drawing attention to this Colony'. 105 A speech by the Colonial Treasurer in the Queensland Assembly in July 1864 echoed this conclusion, noting that 'two years ago this colony was almost unknown; now it is taking a leading position among the other colonies. Then, we had scarcely enough labour to rub along with; now, we have a steady influx of population. Before separation, the land was locked up in the hands of a few speculators, who simply desired to sell it; now it is occupied with sheep and cattle, and settlements are increasing in every direction'. 106 A positive advantage of the land order system was to stimulate many to emigrate who might otherwise not have thought of it. Land was often difficult to obtain or purchase in such a densely populated country like England, but the idea of such a free grant of land in Queensland was a significant spur to potential emigrants. 107 Nevertheless, problems arising from the implementation of the land order scheme led Queensland's government in late July 1863 to establish a Select Committee on the Working of the Immigration Regulations to examine the land order system and Jordan's role as Emigration Commissioner. The committee recommended that land and immigration policies should continue to be interrelated and that the arrangements for land orders should be altered. Land orders in future would not be transferable to any party except the Queensland government; in other words, they could be tendered by the immigrant only in the purchase of Crown lands for their full value. The decision to make land orders non-transferable obviated the need for Queensland's government to purchase them in large numbers, including those due to shipping firms and paying passengers. This would save a great cost for the colony and enable the original intention of the land order system of immigration to be carried out, more than had been the case between 1861 and 1863. 108 The select committee also targeted the Q.I.S., which it condemned as being outside government control. 109 Jordan resigned in January 1864 as Emigration Commissioner and returned to Brisbane to defend the administration of the land order system and his handling of immigration policy, following allegations he had wrongly received money from the Black Ball Line to maintain its monopoly in the immigration business to Queensland. 110 Jordan also sought to explain unexpected hitches in the scheme, arguing that the land order system had operated for three years under 'great obstructions and frequent changes'. 111 Though he was not aware of it at the time, the Queensland government wanted to curtail and eventually close the land order system. 112 Jordan's return to Queensland in 1864 enabled him to defend his character and extol the beneficial effects of the land order system of immigration. 113 He claimed, inter alia, that nearly £1 million sterling had been brought to Queensland by issuing land orders. 114 The Select Committee on the Working of the Immigration Regulations, however, claimed Jordan had made shipping arrangements with just the Black Ball Line whereas the Queensland government wanted competitive tenders from various shipping companies. It was also alleged that he had attempted to dictate to Queensland's government on changes in immigration policy. 115 Jordan successfully refuted these charges and the committee then supported his retention as Emigration Commissioner. The committee's report argued that it would be inexpedient, even dangerous, to abolish a land system of immigration that had met with positive outcomes and that could be modified to produce even better results. The land fund, in the opinion of the committee, should continue to be connected to immigration, with no loans, except for temporary ones, to be repaid from that fund. The committee praised Jordan's work as Emigrant Commissioner in London. 116 Further support for Jordan's activities in the British Isles was given at a public meeting of citizens in Brisbane on 8 August 1864. 117 The Colonial Secretary decided to continue the land order system, subject to new checks to prevent the transfer of the vouchers. 118 It proposed that Jordan be reinstated to his work in the British Isles 'armed with full powers to carry out the land order system of immigration'. 119 Queensland's parliament passed an Immigration Act -the first such measure in the colony -that came into effect on 1 January 1864. This confirmed Jordan's position as Agent-General for Emigration, awarding him the authority to approve fare-paying passengers with land order warrants for use at government land sales. 120 The Queensland government supported the act's stipulation that land orders should be non-transferable as the only way in which their original remit (that is, to populate the resources of a new colony through managed immigration) could be realized. 121 The Queensland government allowed the immigrant to select his or her land on any agricultural reserve laid out within a few miles of a township, giving farmers a convenient market for their produce. 122 The Queensland parliament also amended the Land Act in 1864 to make plots of land more easily available to immigrants, who would have no choice but to settle on the land. 123 The Land Act authorized 30 acre warrants for remittance passengers and a non-transferable £18 land order for full-paying steerage passengers. All adult members of a family travelling were entitled to receive a full £30 land order. New immigrants in Queensland had to pay £18 on arrival and the remaining £12 within two years. Men had to be under 40 and women under 35 to comply with the revised regulations. 124 Keeping the system whereby a land order of £18 was paid on the arrival of an immigrant in Queensland followed by a further land order of £12 two years later, in Jordan's view, was an effective way of persuading a new immigrant to stay in Queensland rather than migrate to another Australian colony. 125 The Immigration Act of 1864 also addressed problems over age restrictions in Queensland's immigration regulations. Disappointment and confusion had arisen from the difference between the age of twelve fixed by the United Kingdom's 1855 Passenger Act as the lower limit for an adult and the age of fourteen stipulated by Queensland's Land Act of 1860. Jordan advocated equalization of the minimum adult age: at present, parents with children aged between twelve and fourteen were required to pay a full fare for them but were not entitled to claim a land order for these children. Jordan wanted an amendment to allow one full land order to be issued to every immigrant aged over twelve while counting two children aged between one and twelve years as one adult. These changes, he considered, would improve the attractiveness of the land order system for prospective emigrants. 126 The Queensland government accepted Jordan's recommendations. The Immigration Act of 1864 defined children as being between one and twelve years old, in contrast to the former plan of reckoning children as being those aged four to fourteen. In addition, two children were to be counted as one adult for the provision of land orders. 127 Most importantly, the act embodied the committee's key recommendation that land orders should not be transferable to any party except Queensland's government: they could be tendered by the immigrant only to purchase Crown lands for their full value. The decision saved the colony a great deal of money in lost land revenue and bailouts. 128 Jordan returned to the United Kingdom on 21 November 1864 and served as the Agent-General for Emigration in London to Queensland until 1866. 129 Arguing that the strong favouritism shown by Herbert to the C.L.E.C. had impeded the implementation of the land order scheme, he now focused energetically on making land orders work as effectively as possible. 130 Jordan expected the land order system and the assisted passages to work together from 1864 onwards to provide sufficient emigrants for Queensland. 131 In 1864 he selected 357 people for free passages from the United Kingdom and offered assisted passages to another 340 supported by colonial funds. 132 In 1865-6 Jordan lectured extensively in Wales, where he hoped to find agriculturalists and mechanics. Jordan's Welsh lectures emphasized the good prospects for agricultural emigrants under the land order scheme in Queensland compared with the restrictive agricultural opportunities in Wales. 133 However, by mid 1866 Jordan found that demand collapsed. He argued that frequent changes to regulations concerning land orders, the age restrictions introduced for immigrants by Queensland's government, and the difficulty in obtaining suitable land for cultivation on easy terms had had 'a most disastrous effect' on emigration from the British Isles to Queensland. These procedural changes had led to many agents in the British Isles declining to co-operate with Jordan because of the complexities involved in checking the age, occupation and eligibility for land orders of each potential emigrant. Meanwhile, information flowed back to Britain that immigrants were poorly received at Queensland immigrant depots and were unable to take up land in the reserves on easy terms. In particular, these difficulties discouraged the emigration of an agricultural class with some capital. 134 Matters came to a head in 1866, when a new Colonial Secretary, R. R. Mackenzie, requested railway navvies be recruited as labourers for the development of Queensland's transport infrastructure. Responsibility for their recruitment was taken out of Jordan's hands. Concluding that officials in Brisbane had lost confidence in his professional activities, Jordan resigned on 26 July 1866. 135 Less than a month later, Queensland's executive council stated that government funds to support immigration were exhausted and that free or assisted passages to Queensland from the British Isles must cease. It was felt that the labour market in Queensland had been inundated 'by a class of immigrants ineligible under the Act, and entirely unsuited to the requirements. A more judicious management would have spared the funds, and kept them available for a longer period, and would have prevented much of the destitution that is now so prevalent'. 136 In September 1866, amid an economic crisis that threatened the government with bankruptcy, it was announced that the Queensland Emigration Office in London would close at the end of the year. 137 An article in the Brisbane Courier for 28 September 1865 claimed that the land order system of immigration to Queensland had succeeded: 'During a little more than four years since it has been in operation, nearly 30,000 persons have gone out to the colony under its provisions ... A large number have gone out in accordance with the principle of the land-order system of emigration -paying their own passages and receiving a £30 land order for each member of the family counted as adults. Very many of these have been agriculturalists, taking some capital with them, and intending to take up their land for cultivation in the colony'.
The article added that the 1864 Immigration Act's provision that made land orders available at their full nominal value for buying suburban lands from the government was a positive move. It would 'prove a great boon to persons going to the colony, such as mechanics and others, who have no intention of farming the land, but will now be able to secure land with their land-orders in the vicinity of the towns'. 138 This rosy assessment of the land order system of immigration disguised the problems that arose after its implementation. Emigration from the British Isles to Australasia between 1861 and 1870 totalled 184,000 people, more than twice the number for Canada (90,200) but easily less than half the number for the U.S.A. (441,800). 139 Between 1861 and 1865, when Jordan oversaw Queensland's emigration recruitment in Britain and Ireland, net migration amounted to 52,855 in Queensland compared with much smaller figures of 11,562 in New South Wales, 5,656 in Victoria, 16,263 in South Australia, 4,165 in Western Australia, and a decrease of 4,355 people in Tasmania. 140 Between 1861 and 1900 Queensland (with 224,367 arrivals from the United Kingdom) was the second highest recipient of immigrants among Australia's colonies (after Victoria, with 436,878). In the same time period, Queensland received many more British and Irish immigrants than South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia combined. 141 My argument here has been that the land order system of immigration was only partially successful. In its first two years of operation (1861-3) serious flaws in the system included the transferability of land orders for cash and the widespread market for them among squatters, benefactors of immigrants and middlemen. The frequency with which land orders were sold on arrival in Queensland meant that new immigrants did not take up land on agricultural reserves as intended. A seepage of new immigrants to other Australian colonies occurred after land orders had been exchanged for cash, which is one reason why the Queensland government was opposed to a secondary land market. Another difficulty lay in the activities of the Q.I.S. in respect of Irish emigration in the period 1862-5. This organization circumvented Jordan's work as Emigration Commissioner by operating a freelance version of the land order system of immigration. The Q.I.S. was a chaotic, poorly regulated addition to the Queensland government's immigration policies.
To prevent the land order system becoming a liability required strong action and bureaucratic changes. Jordan ensured from 1862 onwards that land orders would be issued only to prospective immigrants who submitted correct occupational details. He played an important role in adjusting the operation of the scheme to include assisted emigration from Britain and Ireland to Queensland. He helped to revise the age restrictions in Queensland's immigration laws. He secured arrangements with the Black Ball Line to despatch regular shipments of emigrants taking out land orders. And, as a committed advocate of the scheme, he played a crucial role in its continuance by returning to Brisbane in 1863 to outline the changes needed to ensure it was revised but maintained. The Immigration Act of 1864 was created as a result of the detailed, interconnected consideration of land orders that arose from Jordan's experience as Emigration Commissioner in the British Isles and from the willingness of the Queensland government to absorb his recommendations for a revised system of immigration. Without Jordan's input and recommendations for change, it would never have succeeded to the extent that it did. 142 When Queensland embarked upon the land order system in 1861, its politicians had little experience of overseeing immigration and the first Premier and Colonial Secretary, Robert Herbert, was not a strong advocate of land orders. It required Jordan's advocacy and expertise to implement, improve and preserve the system. Jordan's role in the evolution of colonial Queensland's immigration policy in its initial years therefore demonstrated that organizational decisions taken in London were at least as important as the bureaucratic procedures passed by Queensland's parliament. After 1866 Queensland revived land orders on several occasions because they catered for the colony's need to operate an immigration policy closely integrated with cultivating land resources. Jordan played a persuasive part in the reintroduction of land orders, especially in the mid 1880s, when he was a member of Queensland's legislative assembly and was able to explain his own extensive experience of operating such a scheme between 1861 and 1866. 143