Review.

Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 56, 31 January 1852, Page 10 (Supplement)

Review.

The Gold and the Government^ By Tuos. Turner A'Beckett. Melbourne, Harrison, Collins Street. (l A season of excitement is that in which reflection is most required, yet it is just that in which it is the least exercised." With these words the author of the pamphlet before us opens his dissertation, and justifies at the same time its production. Governments frequently prove themselves incapable of coping with those great convulsions, and of meeting those critical emergencies, which arise sometimes in the history of the nations whose destinies they wield. On such occasions, amid the silence of their indecision, or the hesitancy of their half measures, the humblest counsellor should be heard ;—haply •'■ he may teach even senators wisdom. With these thoughts it is that we undertake a review of the arguments brought by Mr. A'Beckett. The legislators of Victoria, new to their position, are called upon unexpectedly to restrain the burning thirst of men lor gold, to make laws that shall intimidate and check those rampant vices that spring from avarice, to turn the treasure into a beneficial channel, and to avert by mild and wise measures those far and wide evils which are attendant upon the tide of greedy humanity that rushes in a thousand streams to that one centre and reservoir, the gold " diggings." Their mentor thus fixes the responsibility of all this on the right shoulders: tf Tbe gold that is driving us all nationally mad belongs to the crown. It is as much its right as therevenues raised for the administration of public affairs. Nay, it is more peculiarly its own, inasmuch as it is its primary possession, while the " supplies'' are granted by the people to the government. The gold, however, belongs to- the crown, simply as trustee for the people, to be turned to the best account nationally, and tbe system which carries out most completely the application of gold to its true purpose, is that which the government, if faithful to its trust, is bound to give effect to, and the people, if true to their sovereign and to themselves, must assent to and uphold," Mr. A'Beckett is not one of those foolish indiscriminating people who assert that " money is the root of all evil," but he distinguishes between its use and abuse ; " Gold has for ages been acknowledged as the representative of physical good. It has been the stimulator and rewarder of industry, the creator of all that constitute the indicioe of civilization. The moment that Gold ceases.to operate as an incentive to labour, it ceases to be desirable, while in proportion to the energy it imparts to man's mental and physical powers in producing objects to gratify the mind and give comfort to the body, does gold increase in value. It follows as an inevitable consequence that whenever gold diminishes production, instead of increasing it, its existence is a curse and not a blessing." He sets forth at the same time in glowing language, those disastrous effects, when, the red gold bursting as it were in inexhaustible masses upon their sight, the public works and private business of the country were discarded, and the whole current of enterprise diverted into that one channel. This forcible action must produce a re-action, in what way the following sentences ably define:— < "It is obvious that this state of things must continue if our gold discoveries increase, until we come not only to assent to, but to act upon the great truth, that to make them the source of prosperity to us who have fallen upon them, we must with the amount of gold we lay open increase among us the necessaries and comforts of life, and improve the physical aspect cf the colony. This can never be the case as long as gold hunting becomes a general pursuit, and a general pursuit it will be so long as individuals imagine they can obtain it from the earth itself in larger quantities than by any other application of their time or of their labour. True, the disease will tend to cure itself. As general labour becomes scarce personal comforts will be dispensed with, and privation submitted to, until a point shall be reached, at whicb gold can be obtained in larger amount and with less labour by other employment than that of seeking for it in the earth. Labour will then re-assert its importance, and the man in possession of ounces of gold will find them convertible into no more positive good than a short time back he could have procured with ounces of silver, the reward of far less labour and discomfort than he has submitted to in procuring the nominally precious metal. "This is not all. If the present absorption of labour in one pursuit go on unchecked, famine the fiercest fiend with whom man has to wrestle, will make his appearance, and clutch from the gold diggers every shining particle they have accumu-

lated. Either the labourer must feel assured that it is better worth his while to gather in the crops than to gather up the literally golden grain, or be will embrace the latter pursuit and reject the former. If he adopt the former course the gold will depart from our shores to re-appear in the shape of corn, and we shall find that we have amid infinite disorganization, discomfort, and distress, done no more than obtain through gold that which, if gold had never been discovered, we should have received in God's providence from our own soil. This is the utmost we may gain by our gold discovery if we do not regulate its movements, the result arrived at being accompanied by a general retrogression of our colonial prosperity, only to be made up by the adopting for the future sounder views as to the direction in which our true interests lie.

"No reasoning, however cogent, can check the movements of tbe mass in procuring what they believe conducive to their personal interests, still less can it be expected to be effective when it is felt that unless jit be influential upon all, those who follow its dictates will suffer more than those who disregard them. The gold movement cannot therefore be regulated by reason. It must be swayed by legislation, and never in the history of nations has the providence of God brought about events making greater demands upon the sagacity and foresight of man than tue sudden opening out of the Australian gold fields." But to come to the remedy which this pamphlet is written to point out, for it is easy to urge the interposition of restrictions, but not so easy to define and fix those restrictions. Mr. A'Beckett says:— " The duty of the Government appears to me to be plain. It ought in the first place to assert, utterly regardless of popular clamour, its indisputable right to the gold fields, which it has for a time practically abandoned. It already exercises a sleepless vigilance over withered wood and lustreless loam, as our police reports do daily testify, and we read without emotion the fate of the lawless intruder who dares to filch from Crown land fuel for his hearth or sustenance for his carrots. True it is, that the formality of obtaining a licence is required to be gone through to secure the privilege of carrying away gold as well as for carting off dead wood ; but if we compare the number of gold diggers with that of the licenses granted and the gains obtained with tbe amount paid for their accession— it will be felt that the license fee bears about as much relation to the value of the property given up, as the " peppercorn" does to those estates which are held upon the payment " when demanded" of this most accessible globule. "As a means of preserving peace and order among the gold diggers themselves it is doubtless of much importance that licenses should be granted, and when the first rush of the tide of " investigators" have settled down in a calm diffusion over the surface, the license fees may perhaps be collected as serenely and certainly as the fares " fore and aft" are secured on the Aphrasia steamer. The sum however they will produce will scarcely more than cover the expenses of the State in carrying out its collection and in protecting the profits of those from whom it is obtained. If the people generally are to participate in the wealth which the Government is entitled to as the people's representative, a royalty must be required, and, if need be, be enforced, from all who employ themselves in collecting the gold distributed through tbe land and tbe property of the State to whom the land belongs. " The fact of gold being incapable of transmutation into a circulating medium without government assistance, facilitates wond.-rfully the formation of a system of collection of such royalty. Every grain of gold, before it can be converted into any current coin, must be shipped from hence or receive here upon the spot, the impress of royal authority. In all the intermediate stages between its extraction from tbe soil, an 1 its submission to the coiner's die, it is an object of barter, its value increasing or diminishing, as its exchangeable character is strengthened or weakened. Now, to secure the payment of the loyalty, I would render by statutory enactment, all contracts for the sale of gold dust, which had not paid government duty, and all insurance effected thereupon, absolutely void. I would encourage the possessors of gold to bring it into the treasury, by the treasury accepting the responsibility of its charge, giving against it treasury bills or notes, either for a specific sum in money, in which cases the notes should form a legal tender in all money transactions for the sum tbey would represent, or a treasury receipt for the gold itself, which would entitle its holder, by indorsement, to ask at any time for the gold dust it acknowledged. To encourage still further the payment of royalty, I would allow our banks to issue notes against duty paid bullion, estimated at a fixed sum per ounce, and facilitate in every possible way, the marketable character of the duty paid metal, invalidating at the same time every transaction connected with it previous to this payment having been effected, and seizing all gold found upon any vessel quitting our ports which could not be shown to have paid government duty. There is 'yet a further inducement

that might be offered to the making payment of the royalty a voluntary act. It would, of course, be necessary to proportion tbe dues at tbe various gold fields to the richness of the yield, and the expenses of working, and these dues it would, at the poorer diggings, be to the interest of the miners to pay as tbey raised the gold, if the government were to require upon all gold brought to tbe treasury for payment of duty, the highest per centage claimable at the time being upon the produce of any gold field in the colony."

The principal argument with our writer, viz., the tantalising frustration of all useful ends when we over-produce gold, to a degree greater than when we over-produce any other, article for which it may be bartered, is again insisted upon in the following terms :— "It is impossible for any rational being, who studies the question, to avoid the conclusion that ]to make our gold beneficial to us, we want to guard against its over production. If it be of importance as a matter of political economy to avoid the mistake of over-production in those branches of industry which, unduly stimulated, injure only the actual manufacturers, how much more important is it for us to guard against it with reference to gold, which, raised in large quantities, affects less prejudicially its producers, than tbe people among whom they dwell. We may leave the manufacturers of Leeds and Manchester to the check occasioned by their own losses, when they weave more wool, or spin more cotton than the people want, or are able to purchase : but in proportion to the diminution in the exchangeable value of gold resulting from its over production in a gold-yielding country, does the temptation to raise it in large quantities increase. It must be borne in mind too, that though the overproducer of an article exchangeable for gold may suffer individually from bis want of judgment, the community at large are benefited by the. easy terms upon which the article he has to offer may be acquired. With the over-raising of gold, however, the people at large suffer, while the producer, out of the very abundance by which he is depressing his fellow men, is able to protect himself to a considerable extent from the general evil he is inflicting." It is impossible but to admire the courage which has thus grasped a subject which by tacit consent has almost been deemed incomprehensible, and on which but little experience could be brought to bear. Tbe view taken of it in this essay may be fallacious, but nothing but good can result from it, if its chief aim is attained, the awakening of the legislature of Port Philip to a consideration of the gold question. That this is the principal aim of the writer is obvious. " Gentlemen of the Legislative Assembly," he says in conclusion, " Suffer for a season that particular question you had made up your mind to come out upon, to remain in abeyance, and bear a little longer with that monopoly of the squatter, which, whatever may now be said against it, called this colony into being, and caused flocks and herds to take tbe place of the kangaroo and wild dog, in order that j'ou may prevent the formation of that horrible monopoly of souk and body, which unrestrained gold hunting is sure to accomplish. Devote yourselves to the securing for each and all a fair and just distribution of the benefits of which our gold discoveries under a wise administration are susceptible ; but which, if abandoned to *he unrestrained influence of the spirit of Mammon, will bring to our adopted countiy nothing but commercial disaster and social degradation."