THE CONFUSION OF 1852, 1863, 1854 375 



doubled cost of living. Civil servants, mercantile and bankers' 

 clerks did eventually get considerable, though often inadequate, 

 additions to their pay, but for a long time they and their families 

 had a hard struggle to maintain a decent outward aspect. They 

 had to do their own work even beyond the domestic hearth. 

 Tradesmen could sell, but were often unable to deliver goods : they 

 must be taken from the shop. One of Mr. Latrobe's Executive, 

 afterwards a judge, often referred humorously to these times, when 

 he had more than once taken home the family supplies in a wheel- 

 barrow. Out of some fifty licensed water-carters so few remained 

 at their post that many respectable citizens were to be seen at early 

 morn strolling down to the Yarra with a bucket to provide the 

 means of ablution for their families. Even the sanitary arrange- 

 ments of the city, which were of the most primitive kind, fell into 

 deplorable neglect, and the accumulated filth and garbage in the 

 streets and lanes would, in any* other climate, have led to an 

 outbreak of disease. 



But social derangements and personal inconveniences were, 

 after all, but a passing phase, and they left little permanent injury 

 behind. The commercial troubles, however, which were partly 

 engendered by them, wrought more enduring evil, and disclosed 

 an unlooked-for chasm of ruin, in which many prudent and deserv- 

 ing traders were engulfed with the more reckless gamblers in 

 fortune. The causes of these troubles were not far to seek. Mel- 

 bourne in 1852 was probably the most expensive place in the 

 whole world to live in. The sudden expansion of the population 

 in the beginning of the year had cleared out all accumulated stocks, 

 and the very feeding of the multitude became quite as serious a 

 task as providing them with shelter. The rush of all the labouring 

 classes to the diggings had thrown out of cultivation 20,000 pro- 

 ductive acres, on which at least two seasons would be lost. 

 California and Chili were the nearest countries from which supplies 

 could be looked for to ensure the daily bread. Shipmasters, who 

 were fortunate enough to command a crew, found themselves 

 chartered thither for flour at unprecedented rates. And while it was 

 being got many thousands of hardy diggers came to regard the 

 homely damper as an article of luxury, and would have been 



