EFFECTS OF GOLD-FINDING IN AUSTRALIA: CHINESE IMMIGRATION.
London, 30th September 1861. Sue—Among the probable effects of gold-finding in Australia on the etono- mical and social condition of our Southern Colonies, there are two in parti- cular to which I am desirous of drawing your attention.
In the first place, provided always the field of operations should turn out to be as wide and as rich as is commonly expected, there cannot be a doubt that the productive industry of the whole group of colonies will be deranged to the extent of disorganization, not to say destruction. We must not judge by California, where, the country having been almost a desert when the gold was found, there was nothing to destroy. In South Australia, Vic- toria, Tasmania, and more especially New South Wales, a vast capital exists —vast, that is, in proportion to the number of inhabitants—in the form of livestock. The produce of this capital is the staple produce of these coun- tries. Their live stock furnishes nearly the whole of their exports, and therefore of their imports. Nay, even when their imports largely eseeed their exports, as frequently happens through the introduction of fresh capi- tal from the mother-country, the live stock is the attraction, or in other words the cause, of the excess ; because the purpose of the immigrant capi- talist, in nineteen cases out of twenty, is to invest his property in pastoral husbandry. Speaking generally, all enjoyment and accumulation of wealth in these colonies depends upon live stock. The only exception of any mo- ment is in the copper-mining of South Australia. With this single excels- lion the great capital of the Australasian group of colonies appears to be as destructible as it is possible fur capital to be. It diffem in this respect from fixed improvements on land, from factories and their machinery, from most kinds of raw material, from shipping, and even from some kinds of food : for it cannot be preserved at ail—it inevitably perishes, without =- ceasing care and management. The care and management, too, must be of a very skilful kind ; an art whereof ti :e knowledge, more especi- ally as regards fine-woolled sheep, can only be acquired by considerable practice. And, what is still more important with reference to the point which I am approaching, such is the nature of pastoral husbandry in prairie coun- tries, that its profitable pursuit requires a large capital ; so that the care and management is only superintended by the owner of the capital, and is ne- cessarily carried on, in every case, by a number of labourers receiving wages from a single master. It would be wrong to call them his dependents ; for in truth the very existence of his property depends on their choosing to re- main with him as servants. Now we have come to the point in question. If the industry of New South Wales consisted, like that of Canada for the moat part, in the management of farms of about one hundred acres each, the pro- ' erty of the managers, it might not be greatly deranged by the discovery of gold-dust, because the farmers would be loath to abandon their beloved pro- perties ; if it were greatly deranged, still, considering how little exportable or surplus produce is yielded by farming in which the capitalist and labourer are one and the same person, both the individuals and the country might find. ample compensation in the gold-diggings : but in the prairies of Australasia, where most property consists of live stock, supplied with food by nature, rind managed by hired labourers, an economical derangement which shall gene- rally convert stock-keepers and shepherds into gold-diggers, must have the effect of destroying the great bulk of existing capital. That capital is so large that many a year may elapse before its value can be re- placed by gold-digging. Even when gold-digging shall have yielded a value greater than that of all the live stock in these colonies, that value will not be capital producing annual wealth for Australian export and import, but will be carried away and dispersed over the world, leaving the oolomes, with their pastoral industry destroyed, impoverished by the dis- covery of gold. The tendency of gold to quit the country where it is found, in the hands of those who find it, or who buy it with perishable goods, is as remarkable as the highly destructible nature of the present wadth.of these colonies. Between the operation of these two causes, one can fancy
a while to comparative poverty: - • ,
The social effects of the Australian gold discovery may be equally lament- able. . At first there will, at us suppose, be a great influx of people from- thin country : but of what sort of people ? Of 4 vagabond and reckless young unmarried men, such as have gone to California ; a class superior indeed to the .convicts and offspring of convicts who swarm in our colonies; but not greatly Superior, and in nowise . fit materials for colonies. tier). Add to these the half.•wild stock-keepers of the Australian. prairies, and the great mass of convioM; and semi-convicts who have surely gone to the diggings, and one obtains 4 glimpse of a social hell upon earth which it is Sickening to contemplate, aud which for that reason is unlikely to be improved by the inindigration of decent families: But these people will obMin plenty of gold. Let us believe it, and, as necessary :conse, quences, that great quantities of goo& are exported from this country, that food produced in 'Tasmania and New Zealand. finds -a ready market at high prices, and that all kinds of mere trading becemes more active than ever in places not far from the diggings ; still as the chief Australian prOductiim will be gold for exportation, and the printipalitaport nothing but periMahle goods for the gold-diggers, the industry of the.coun-: try' wilt have so- degenerated in characnar as to be wholly unattractive to the better class of emigrants, and will be so. precarious with regard to dura- tion as to have no effect in establishing a fixed population. Meanwhile, of the population which before the discovery of gold was fixed by pastoralhusbandry, the labouring class will vagabondize as gold-diggers, and the masters will be- ruined. ; 'This- Master class of pastoral life is the principal eletnent of social reapectability.in the ...Australian Colonies—the antagonist and gounteraetien ,of 0.onyiet andilevr Jewish element. Their wealth, and their importance as owners of the great bulk of productive capital, no less than their position asthe_ true coloinsera of the country, and the continual- increase of tneirminthe,riiiiii proportion M _the increase a live stock, give them a social and po iti'eal influence fo Whieh it is. oWing, snore especially in New South Widen,. that:begot:MU, is net uninhabitable by gentlefolk& Along with some people in the towns who resemble and sympathize with them, and in a
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great measure depend on them, such as clergymen lawyers, and doctors, theyconstitute the " nobility, clergy, and gentry" of the land,-as distinguished not 'from such trading and labouring classes as those of England, but from theffoul. materials which compose the ream of. town population in these pol. Inked settlements of England. If the neck-owners should-be ruined and ob- literated, the component ;parts of the aforesaid hell :upon earth will have their own way in all things, and will stamp all things with the mark of their own corruption: New South Wales will then indeed -be, as has been said of it already, rotten beforeit is ripe. A mixture of Californian gold- getting and Australian convictism,ntiteinpered by .any ingredient of worth or decenoy, may present a condition of eoeiety baser and moredetestalde than
any that the world.has seen. •
It has been proposed, with a view to averting or minimizing such evils, that the Imperial Government should p'rom'ptly and vigorously place the Australian gold-field-under the reatraintir of law 'upheld by adequate force. In what manner ? by -what .meane?.. If the promptitude And vigour were available, the " force " must. conenst of regimentsi and regiments in the neighbourhood of gold-diggings would dissolve like masses of common labour for hire. There will'doubtless come from the Colonies an earnest prayer for Imperial troops : but if the danger is as great as is supposed—if the gold- field is wide and rich, enough to afford gains of 8t. or 10/. a week to each of as many people as choose to work in it—regiments sent to the Colonies would melt away soon after landing ; and this would only be an extremely costly mode of adding to the numbers of an ungovernable population. It seems Worth noting, that Australia will differ for the worse from California, in the habitual dependence of her people .on.onleial authority, in their want of self- reliance for self-government, and even in their ignorance of the uses and administration of Lynch law.
I have not said that an expedition of soldiers, if otherwise likely to he of aervice, would be too late. The dissolution of the pastoral wealth of these colonies may not be so rapid as sonic people imagine. By means of all sorts of shifts and expedients, weak indeed, and of necessity but temporary, the live stock, or a great part of it, may -be preserved for some time—long enough perhaps for enabling us to use a permanent preservative if we could but find one. Let us see, From the nature of things it is indispensable that our remedial application should exactly correspond with the disease. The root of the evils to be guardedagainst is the scarcity, perhaps the utter i want, of hired labour for pastoral purposes. It would be idle to send Stock- keepers and shepherds from this country, because meet of them would at once become gold-diggers. We should not be sorry, if it were- possible, to have the use of some slaves, black, brown, or white, whose labour might be retained by compulsion in this or that employment. But slavery being im- possible, is any substitute for it available ? ),lore than twenty years are after i careful inquiry ntathe subject, I farmed the opinion that our Southern Colonies might be easily and abundantly furbished with labour for hire by means of immigration from China. The supply would- be unlimited, the cost of pas- sage small, and the annual cost of the labour in the form of wages singularly little; but, above all, labourers imported from China, being ignorant of our laws and language, and disposed to adhere strictly to their bargains, would
not be prone to quit employers'for the gold-diggings, or to vet up for themselves in any other employment. They would prove a sort of natural slaves. As such, if we could but obtain plenty of them in time, they would preserve the actual wealth of our Southern Colonies from destruction, and would prevent their social degradation as a consequence of the ruin of 'their pastoral capitalists. Nay, more, if the immigration of Chinese labour fur- nished ample means of carrying on and extending pastoral husbandry, a good part of the produce of gold-digeng might, instead of leaving the Colo- nies without bringing anything to them in return,. be converted into live stock ; and thus their permanent wealth and population might be augmented by the discovery of gold. I am ,proposing a pleasant counter-revolution of that dismal revolution, both social and economical, which at present threat- ens to ensue from the discovery of gold.
It would be a great improvement upon any emigration of labour that
has heretofore taken place from China, if means could be found of inducing women to emigrate in equal numbers with the men, or at least in consider- able numbers. Until this were done, the men would not settle in our Colo- nies : they would only workthere for a time and then return to China with the savings made from their wages. Perhaps the present disturbances in China might facilitate the attainment of the latter object. If once the stream were set flowing, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Chinese, would settle in the Australia and New Zealand; the productive powers of those ounlaies, and their inducements to the immigration of people of all classes
from this country,. would be incalculably augmented; and thus, good coming mit of evil, the discovery of gold in Australia might prove immensely ad- vantageous to all that part of the world. • ' •
.. Fearful of trespassing on your space, I will now conclude with the obser- yetion, that if we had any statesmen not perfectly. indifferent to Colonial questions, the subject of Cbineee emigration to Australasia, as well as that or, steam coMmumeation by the direct and smooth-water tray of Panama, vial& obtain their immediate and-serious notioe. '•
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