Segak.— The Flood of Gold. 135 



salaries, as the civil servant or professional man en- 

 gaged at fixed salary, form another class to whom the 

 depreciation of gold is injurious. For such salaries are 

 slow to move, and as the cost of living increases the 

 salary will purchase less and less. The loss which fell 

 long since on the civil servants of India through the depre- 

 ciation of silver seems now about to involve their brethren 

 throughout the world. The earners of wages also may 

 suffer a little ; but at the present time, and in this colony, 

 when the increase of wages does not actually precede the 

 increase in the cost of living it very soon follows, so that 

 there need be no anxiety for the position of the labourer 

 and artisan as directly affected by the depreciation of gold. 

 Arbitration Courts are not indispensable to insure wages 

 keeping pace with prices, as witness the general rise in wages 

 that has taken place of recent years beyond New Zealand as 

 well as within it. The creditor, as such, also loses ; as each 

 year passes by the interest he receives is of less value to him 

 than before, and when ultimately his principal is returned 

 to him, though nominally of the same amount as when 

 lent, it is of less use to him than it would then have been 

 in the purchase of commodities. 



So greatly did these influences operate after the discovery 

 of America that Professor Walker describes the consequences 

 of the metallic inflation that followed in the following words : 

 " So rapid was the fall, so great the disturbance of trade and 

 industry that followed, so wholesale the reduction in the value 

 of fixed incomes and permanent charges, that widespread dis- 

 tress and much permanent pauperism resulted. . . . Mr. 

 Jacob attributes to the overwhelming changes in the pur- 

 chasing-power of money at this period that sudden increase 

 of pauperism which gave occasion for the establishment of 

 the English poor-laws, and those financial embarrassments 

 of Charles I. which led to the great rebellion. Instead of 

 a slow and gradual diminution of the weight of indebtedness 

 (that mortgage which the representatives of past produc- 

 tion hold upon the produce of present labour), debts were in 

 many cases almost confiscated by the rapid depreciation of 

 the money in which they were to be paid. The creditor class 

 was very generally impoverished, if not hopelessly ruined." 

 And, again, "Of those who had possessed barely enough 

 for the support of old age or helpless infancy, great num- 

 bers were impoverished and brought into dire distress. 

 The traces of the deep disturbances of that time long 

 remained upon the face of English society. But it was not 

 alone upon the upper classes that misfortune fell. Serving- 

 men and domestics were discharged by reduced gentle- 

 men faster than the existing industries or new enterprises 



