THE CONFUSION OF 1852, 1853, 1854 379 



pared to meet the era of diminished profits and increased bad debts. 

 The accumulations of 1852 lay idle in the banks, earning nothing. 

 The building up of the suburbs had been going on all the year, and 

 daily the price of allotments was increasing. Land companies and 

 building societies were being formed to secure some of the profits 

 of subdivision and building. The trader was tempted to use some 

 of his idle savings in what certainly seemed a most legitimate in- 

 vestment. Then, in 1853, there began an era of keen competition 

 for suburban lands, which the Government fed by bringing small 

 lots into the market and having auction sales almost weekly. A 

 wave of speculation was roused, and nearly every buyer who 

 secured a few acres cut it up into allotments measured by feet, and 

 with the aid of bold advertisements, of champagne luncheons and 

 bands of music, gathered round him delirious buyers, and ap- 

 parently often realised large profits. The savings of the traders 

 were largely locked up in this form, and when they were wanted 

 to meet bad times and unexpected demands, explanations were 

 necessary with creditors. During 1853 enough " eligible building 

 sites" were offered for sale to have provided for the requirements 

 of the Melbourne of 1900. But by the beginning of 1854 the game 

 was played out, and a year later suburban lands that had been sold 

 by the Government up to 500 per acre could have been bought for 

 50, but there were no purchasers. In this trouble all classes were 

 more or less entangled. Men without means had bought on credit, 

 and their aspirations to be landholders were represented by hundreds 

 of thousands of pounds in the shape of valueless bills of exchange, 

 which, in the hands of usurious money-lenders, became veritable 

 instruments of torture for years. The Insolvent Court wiped out 

 a great many obligations ; thrift and industry overcame others. 

 Gradually, after a severe weeding-out process, the road to pros- 

 perity was again visible, and the first few years under the New 

 Constitution started the colony once more on a progressive though 

 far less meteoric career. How came it about that the year 1851, 

 without gold, opened upon the colony in a state of substantial pros- 

 perity, trade sound and satisfactory, and employment abundant ; 

 while 1854, after gold to the value of 33,000,000 had been raised, 

 closed in widespread commercial distress, saw hundreds of ruined 



