adventurous explorations of Columbus. The conquest of Nature by Man had proceeded far in the interval; and the new powers then springing into existence and all the old ones too-at once obtained golden wings, gifting them with wider range and higher capabilities of usefulness. Enough has been said in this chapter-and has been exhibited in the prior review of the Past-to demonstrate, or at least to indicate, the benefits to mankind at large, and not least to the poorer and dependent classes, of an ample supply of the precious metals which mankind have accepted as the measure of value, and as the means by which wealth becomes most potent and efficient for the civilised work of production and trade, through the profitable employment of human labour, and consequently for the comfortable maintenance of those classes whose labour is their only property. In the chapters on California and Australia, together with the two chapters next following, we show how strikingly and potently the New Gold operated in the gold-countries, which it served so rapidly to populate and develop, and also in its first great impulse upon the British Isles, to which country the New Gold chiefly and most directly flowed. It only remains to show how the benefits of expanded commerce, and of increased employment and production, were realised, under the influence of the rich mines of California and Australia, during that bright quarter of a century which-I hope fitly is here designated the New Golden Age. CHAPTER XVII. FIRST GETTING OF THE NEW GOLD. In the work of gold-finding as prosecuted in modern times, in California and Australia, there were two circumstances which are unique, whether regarded universally, as a matter of fact, or in Economical Science. Of these circumstances I shall begin with the secondary one, because it can be the more briefly treated, It relates to the primal acquisition of Wealth in this peculiar branch of industry,-that is, from the gold-mines. Under ordinary circumstances, in all branches of Trade and Production the profits and increase of wealth go first to the Capitalist-to the Manufacturer, Merchant, or Farmer; not to the Labourer, but to the Employer of labour. It is in the hands of the masters and capitalists that wealth begins to accumulate; and it is through and from their hands, and usually as a consequence of an extension of their business, that new wealth ultimately reaches the labouring class. At the Gold-fields the case was quite different. The ordinary course or flow of VOL. II. T |