the liberation of South America from the rule of Spain, and when we lost several millions of our recently re-acquired gold in loans to the new republics, while a frenzy of speculation created a baseless and transient prosperity at home, and again in 1843-6, when some fine harvests and a small but welcome influx of gold from the Ural mines combined with the excitement of Free Trade and the railway mania to increase employment the whole period had been one of extreme depression and distress, which naturally showed itself in political virulence and discontent. The expenses of Government had been reduced to a minimum and the army and navy largely curtailed. Peace and retrenchment were the watchwords of the Whig Administrations which followed; sinecures were hunted out and abolished; even the yeomanry was all but disbanded for the sake of saving a few pounds a year. Yet all this economy was inadequate to meet the diminished productiveness of the taxes. Every year there was a difficulty with the budget, sometimes a deficit. It became a saying that the Whigs were bad financiers, just as a similar saying has been in later times applied to the Conservatives. Mr. Fawcett, in his recent book, remarks that during the thirty years between 1815 and 1845, although the national expenditure had reached its lowest point, and the rivalry with the French Empire in military armaments had not begun, there was absolutely no development of the foreign trade of the country. In 1841,' he says, the exports were about fiftyone millions a year, the precise amount at which they stood a quarter of a century previously.' At that time the Burnley guardians wrote to the Home Secretary that the distress was far beyond their powers; at Stockport more than half the master-spinners failed before the close of 1842; and a committee of inquiry reported that half the population of Carlisle were likely to die of famine. So different has been our experience since 1850, that such statements seem wellnigh incredible. Even Sir Robert Peel's wise fiscal measures, and. the completion of the Free Trade system by the subsequent Liberal Administration, could not contend against the tide of adversity. Just as the agriculturists, although enjoying Protection, had suffered intensely throughout these thirty years, so the manufacturers found Free Trade an inadequate talisman to ward off the epidemic distress. From 1846 to 1850 or 1851 the times were at least as bad as ever, farmers and manufacturers suffering alike; while low wages and lack of employment fell heavily upon the working classes.

It was upon this dismal background of universal suffering

in Europe that the tidings of the gold-discoveries flashed like a ray of happy light, quickly broadening and brightening into what seemed a daybreak of golden summer, full of hope and joy. The working classes, in tens of thousands, rushed off to the new golden lands, rejoiced to find good employment for their strong arms and hopeful hearts-thereby at once relieving the overstocked labour-market at home, and soon creating new markets for produce and additional employment for their fellows whom they left behind. It was a thrill of joyous clation such as had never before pervaded the population of Europe and America. On the banks of the Sacramento river and on the alluvial plains of Ballarat there was gold in abundance, gold everywhere. The news penetrated into every workshop, and was talked of by the shepherds on every hillside. There were new homes for the half-starving people beyond the sea, new regions where political discontent might become its own master. And these golden stores of Nature were as open to the poor as to the rich, or indeed were peculiarly the property of the working man. The stores of silver and gold obtained at the first discovery of the New World had fallen as spoil to the Spanish chiefs and adventurers who followed in the wake of Columbus. Not an ounce of the precious. ores had fallen to the lot of the masses; and after the treasures of the Incas and Montezuma had been reaped, the working of the mines of Mexico and of Potosi had been forced upon the poor Indians under as merciless a system of slavery as ever disgraced the world. But now the golden field was open to all comers; and at first, and for several years, the gains of goldmining were won solely by the hardy working men from the old seats of civilisation.

While this hopeful enthusiasm pervaded the great body of the people, the learned class looked on the new discoveries in a much less hopeful light. What the opinions of our statesmen and practical politicians may have been it is impossible to say; for, strange as it may appear, they made little reference to the subject. But the economists and other scientific authorities were chiefly impressed by the unpromising and adverse features of the case. To the economists

The

the primary and predominant view was one of alarm. chief consequence of these discoveries of gold, they said, would be a great and rapid fall in the value of money, and consequently a serious revolution in property. The common saying was that the sovereign would quickly lose half its value; that wages and prices would be doubled; and capitalists would find their accumulated wealth steadily vanishing from year to

year. Thus a monetary revolution was predicted, a barren levelling, a sweeping away of the past, and a fresh start as regarded the accumulations of wealth, as complete as the worst form of political revolution could accomplish, and far more severe than any confiscation that could be effected by the most despotic exercise of class-taxation. So formidable did this apprehension appear, that the only comfort for those who shared it lay in the predictions of the geologists, who, judging from past experience of the globe, held that the new mines would soon be exhausted, and that the golden age would pass away almost as quickly as a dream. The world, indeed, would have lost much had these anticipations been realised.

The opinions and anticipations current in scientific circles in 1850-1, which in their chief form continued to be held for several years thereafter, may be classed under three heads.

First, as to the continued productiveness of the new mines. Upon this point scientific opinion was unhesitatingly adverse. The history of gold-finding throughout many previous centuries was pretty well known; and from the Spanish and other gold-mines of the Roman world downwards the same tale was recorded, namely, that they were surface-mines, gradually, if not quickly, worked out. Unlike silver, gold is never found in mass, in veins or lodes; it is interspersed in threads or flakes throughout quartz or other hard rocks; and there was no known instance of gold-mining having ever been conducted profitably in the native rock. The common and accepted explanation of the cessation of the gold-mines of the ancient world, particularly those worked in Spain by the Romans, was that when the miners had exhausted and penetrated down through the auriferous detritus to the matrix rock, the working became unremunerative, owing to the extreme hardness of the rock-an explanation, so far as we have observed, which is still accepted, and is doubtless correct in the main, although some of the Californian facts which we shall notice by-and-by appear to us to suggest a wholly different cause, likely to have been in operation in some quarters. Past experience, then, and certain well-known geological facts, were adverse to the continued productiveness of the new mines. Moreover, the very richness of these mines, far surpassing anything of the kind previously known, seemed to class them as an exceptional phenomenon, likely to vanish with exceptional quickness. Accordingly Sir R. Murchison, the most eminent geologist of the day, maintained that there is a Currency Restriction Act of Nature—that the supply of gold from the alluvial washings would soon be exhausted, and that, when the excavations came

to be made in the rocks or mountains from which the auriferous detritus proceeded, the work would cease to be profitable, owing to the hardness of the strata in which the gold is embedded. This was the accepted, indeed unquestioned, opinion among geologists; and it carried general assent, being in perfect accordance with previous experience.

At the time when this opinion was expressed by Sir R. Murchison (October 1850), the extent of the auriferous alluvial soil in California had not been ascertained. There were only vague reports, which at first were received with general incredulity. The late Sir Archibald Alison, however, gave credence to them, and the hopeful enthusiasm with which he hailed these new gold-mines, as fraught with vast blessings to mankind, led him to accept these reports even more fully than has been warranted by subsequent experience. We have often had occasion to point out the singular want of judgment and accuracy of that popular writer; but in fairness to him it must be said that his estimate of the gold-fields was much nearer the truth than that of most of his contemporaries. He formed an opinion entirely opposite to that entertained by the geologists as to the continued productiveness of the mines. He maintained that, as a matter of evidence, the Californian auriferous deposits were so extensive that they could not be exhausted for many generations; and as a question of mechanical and chemical science, he held that, when the auriferous alluvium was exhausted, gold-mining would be profitably carried on in the parent rocks or mountains. And he maintained that, after making all allowance for errors of exaggeration, if the accounts of its extent and riches are at all to be relied on, there is ample room for a vast annual addition to the treasures of the earth for a 'great many generations to come.'

Here, then, was a very striking divergence of opinion relative to the continued productiveness of the new gold-mines. As we shall show immediately, it is only recently that the real character and distribution of the golden detritus in California have been ascertained, and possibly even yet they have not been ascertained with anything like precise knowledge; and in some of Alison's views, as in those of his opponents, there were mistakes which are now manifest. Nevertheless, as regards the alluvial gold-beds, Alison was substantially right, and the geologists, as subsequent experience has shown, were entirely wrong. Thirty years have elapsed since the discovery of gold in California, and the mines show no sign of exhaustion. The annual yield is much less than at first, owing to only a small area of the alluvium being workable at

any one time, but the alluvium is as rich in gold as ever, while a very large portion of it still remains untouched.

In 1858, after eight years of further experience, M. Michel Chevalier, an eminent authority upon such subjects, published his views upon the gold-discoveries. By that time all doubt as to the vast productiveness of the new mines, both in California and Australia, was at an end. The predominant sentiment, indeed, and the one which inspired his book, was one of alarm at the vastness of the effects which these new supplies of gold were calculated to produce. His estimate of the continued productiveness of the new mines-and, although very defective, it is the latest which has been given by any man of eminence -was, that the Californian and Australian gold-mines will continue at their present rate of productiveness for a hundred years. The grounds for his estimate may be briefly stated thus:-In the Ural mountains they wash, with profit, sands which contain only one ounce of gold in 450,000 ounces of earth; and in the valley of the Rhine the most favoured spots yield only one part of gold in seven million parts of earth. On the other hand, the yield of the rich gold-fields of Siberia is 1 in 100,000; and according to various accounts the yield of the good soils of California and Australia is frequently as much. Supposing, then, said M. Chevalier, that the soils which can be most advantageously worked in California and Australia produce at this rate, and that the auriferous beds are, on an average, a mètre (39 inches) in thickness, 1,500 acres would yield 16,000,000l.-i.e. more than an ordinary year's produce for each of those countries; and a hundred times this space would be sufficient to continue the present yield for a century. Now, the extent of auriferous soil, requisite for a century's production at the present rate, is less than the area of Middlesex; and M. Chevalier held that it was not a very sanguine view to suppose that both in California and Australia auriferous alluvial soil of this extent and richness will be found. To this estimate M. Chevalier added the following remarks:

'There are several ways in which such a field of operations may be arrived at, for it must be borne in mind that frequently these auriferous banks are much more than a mètre in depth; nor must it be forgotten that their richness may greatly exceed that of 1 to 100,000. In fact this return is not the maximum below which the extraction would necessarily cease to be profitable: it is very far from it. There have been worked, and are now being worked, in all the auriferous regions, some banks the produce of which is not one-fifth or one-sixth as much as the above.'