EFFECTS OF THE GOLD DISCOVERIES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume III, Issue 124, 21 May 1853, Page 5

EFFECTS OF THE GOLD DISCOVERIES.

[From Alison's History of Europe.]

To appreciate the immense and blessed influence of this event upon the happiness and prospects of mankind, we have only to suppose that it had not taken place, and consider what would, in that event, have been the destiny of the species ? America, with twenty-four millions of inhabitants, is now doubling its numbers every twenty-five years ; Russia, with sixtysix millions, every fifty years; twenty-five millions are yearly added to the inhabitants of Europe west of the Vistula ; and the British colonies in Australia are rising at a rate which promises ere long to outstrip the far-famed rapidity of Transatlantic increase. Great and unprecedented as is this simultaneous growth of mankind in so many parts of the world, it is vet outstripped by the increase of their industry and transactions. The enhanced activity and energy, springing from the development of the democratic passions in Western Europe ; the multiplied wants and luxuries of man, arising from the long continuance of peace, and growth of realized wealth ; the prodigious change effected by steam, at sea and land, in their means of communication, have all conspired to multiply their transactions in a still greater ratio than their numbers. In these circumstances, if the circulating medium of the <;lobe had remained stationary, or declining, as it was from 1815 to 1849 from the effects of .South American revolution and English legislation, the necessary result must have been that it would have become altogether inadequate to the wants of men ; and not only would industry have been everywhere cramped, but the price of produce would have universally and constantly fallen. Money would every day have become more valuable—all other articles measured in money less so : debts and taxes would have been constantly increasing in weight and oppression ; the fate which crushed Rome in ancient, and has all but crushed Great Britain in modern times, would have been that of the whole family of mankind. The extension and general use of a paper currency might have alleviated, but it could not have removed these evils; for no such currency, common to all mankind, has ever yet been found practicable ; and such is the weight of capital, andvthe strength of the influences which,in an artificial state of society ie comes to exercise on the measures of the Government, that experience gives no countenance to the belief that any necessities of mankind, however urgent, would lead to the adoption of measm'es by which its realised value might be lessened. All these evils have been entirely obviated, and the opposite set of blessings introduced, by the opening* of the great reserve treasures ot nature in California and Australia. As clearly as the basin of the Mississipi was prepared by the hand of nature to receive the surplus inipuliition of the Western World, were the gold mines of California provided to meet the wants of the Western, those of Australia of the Eastern Hemisphere. We can now contemplate with complacency any given increase of mankind; the growth of'their numbers will not lead to the aggravation of their sufferings.

Three years only have elapsed since Californian gold was discovered by Anglo-Saxon enterprise, and the annual supply has already come to exceed £25,000,000 sterling. Coupled with the mines of Australia and the Ural mountains, it will soon exceed thirty, perhaps reach forty millions ! Before half a century has elapsed, prices of every article of commerce will be tripled, enterprise proportionally encouraged, industry vivified, debts and taxes lessened. A fate the precise reverse of that which destroyed Eome, and so sorely distressed England, is reserved for the great family of mankind. When the discovery of the compass, of the art of printing, and of the New World had given an extraordinary impulse to human activity in the sixteenth century, the silver mines of Mexico and Peru were opened by Providence, and the means of conducting industry in consistence with human happiness was afforded to mankind. When, by the consequences of the French Revolution, the discovery of steam conveyance, the improvement in machinery, and the vast extension of European emigration, a still greater impulse was given to the human species in the nineteenth century, the gold mines of California and Australia were brought into operation, and the increase in human numbers and transactions was even exceeded by the means provided for conducting them ! If ever the benevolence of the Almighty was clearly revealed in human affairs, it was in these two decisive discoveries made at such periods ; arid be who, on considering them, is not persuaded of the superintendence of an ever watchful Providence, would not be convinced though one rose from the dead.