GOLD AND IMMIGRATION.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 782, 12 October 1853, Page 4

GOLD AND IMMIGRATION.

[From the “ Sydaey Morning Herald’ 1 ]

At the beginning ot last year the great bulk of the people in England cared no more about the “ Gold Districts of Australia” than if such districts existed nowhere but in fable ; long betoie its close they had come to think of those same districts of an Eldorado of which no language was too glowing, no imagination too extravagant, to pourtray the actual riches. We have seen that it had been proclaimed to them as a well authenticated fact, that in New South Wales alone the gold fields extended over sixty thousand square miles, and that the Australian Agricultural Company’s three hundred thousand acres on the Peel River had turned out to be an immense field of gold ! And the announcements were put forth so broadly ■without the slightest attempt to qualify or explain that the masses of the people were at liberty to take them in their most literal sense, and to suppose that these immense areas were really compact blocks of pure gold. And we perceive from the London papers, that for several weeks before the arrival of the existing intelligence about the Peel River, our auriferous wealth had been magnified to dimensions which left that of California far behind. In one place we see it stated as “ a moderate estimate, ’ that the yearly produce of the Australian mines would be not less than £40,000,000; in another that the next year’s produce ot the Southern, western, # and not hern mines of our own colony would exceed £40,000,000 Mint value. If these statements served no other purpose than to fill people’s minds with wonder, and give them something racy to talk about at their firesides and in their nurseries, wc should perhaps only smile at them as displays of human credulity. But they served a different and far less innocent purpose. They were unsettling the minds of England’s population. They were including a disposition to emigrate so intense and so widely spread, as to cause serious apprehension that what had hitherto been relief might become exhaustion. So spoke the Times. The apprehension may have been not less exaggerated than were the rumours of oar auriferous wealth. Thcre_ is no exaggeration, however, in the fact that thousands of out fellow-subjects were relinquishing employments, breaking up establishments, sacrificing property, and quitting the land of their fathers, under hopes and calculations which in the vast majority of instances were doomed to bitter disappoint meut. It was computed that by I lie end of the year 1852, the numbers who would have left the British isles for the gold regions of Australia, would be at least one hundred thousand souls— and these only the pioneers af still greater numbers to follow in 1853. How few of these hosts would realise those avenues to early fortune of which nineteuths of them were so fondly dreaming! How large a portion of them would discover, on first touching our shores, that between the Australia pictured in their imaginations, and the Australia actually existing, there is all the difference between fiction and truth ! How many who come fully bent on filling their pockets with gold, and then returning home to end their days in easily won competence, will be compelled to betake themselves to the ordinary pursuits of industry, and settle down amongst us for life ! At any rate, Australia will be the gainer ; and in the long run the disappointed emigrants themselves, if they act a prudent part, will be gainers too. Australia has long been sighing for population, as the one great desideratum to matured prosperity. She is gaining the otject of her desires, and in the prosperity which will thus be secure 1 io her all who cast in their lot with us may freely participate The gain will Le mutual, and so out ot temporary evil will be deduced permanent good. The addition of a hundred thousand souls to our population in less than a single year is a fact of ■which the importance cannot be rightly understood without comparing it with other facts of the like nature. One is, the amount of the population to which this addition was made. If we estimate the population of New South Wales and Victoria, at the time when this rush of immigration began to reach the colonies at three hundred thousand, the addition is shown to have been at the rate of thirty-three per cent. —an immense augmentation within the space of little more than six months ! Another fact to be looked at is that ■of our past experience in the increase of our numbers from the same scource. We find that during the thirteen years ending with 1850, the total number of emigrants who arrived in the colony, including the District of Fort Phillip, was 103,000. So that by means of our gold the work of thirteen years has been accomplished for us in less than one year! The numbers added to our population during the last half of 1852 and the first quarter of 1853, are equal to the numbers added b tween the end of 1837 and the end of 1850.

Extraordinary as this result is, it is still more extraordinary that as yet this immense influx of labour-power has had no sensible eflect in s applying the wants of our labour market. So far from having overstocked the market, the market is still bare. So far from having caused a reduction in wages, wages are higher than they ever were before. This shows how vast are the resources, how immeasurable the capacities, of the Australian colonies. Our cry still is, we want more labour. We want it in the towns, we want it in the country. We want mechanics, we want domestic servants, we want farm labourers and shepherds ; we want, in short, every description of labour, except that of commercial clerks.