CHAPTEK XV. 



THE SOCIAL, COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL CONFUSION 

 OF 1852, 1853, 1854. 



THE year 1852 was the period of the greatest social and political 

 disorganisation that the colony experienced. It covered a time of 

 unexpected developments and unexampled complications. Crimes 

 of violence and episodes of riotous debauchery sprang into existence 

 before the means for their repression could be organised, and for a 

 time the country promised to rival that historic condition when 

 " there was no king in Israel". Every allowance should be made 

 for the short-comings of authority when it is remembered that in 

 this year of unpreparedness the population sprang from 97,000 to 

 168,000. 



In 1853, the further increase of population was 54,000, but on 

 the whole it was of a more stable and permanent class. It com- 

 prised a large number of people engaged in mercantile and trading 

 pursuits, who intended to live on the digger, rather than on the 

 diggings. The large profits which many of them made fostered a 

 tendency to speculation, and this year saw the price of real estate 

 forced up to a figure which no reasoning could justify, prices at 

 which it was found impossible to realise even thirty years later. 



In 1854, although the population was again further increased 

 by no less than 90,000, the reaction commenced. The wild extra- 

 vagance and wasteful expenditure of the two preceding years had to 

 be atoned for, and by the end of 1854 the results of the second 

 " boom " in which the colony had indulged were made manifest in 

 very widespread insolvencies, and a heavy fall in value of all kinds 

 of property, from which the recovery was prolonged and tedious. 

 There had been troubles, too, on the goldfields, serious rioting and 



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