FISCAL POLICY AND AGRICULTURE 351 



shipping was enormous. Employment became abun- 

 dant, and the scale of wages rose. 



All economic writers are agreed as to the gigantic 

 impulse which these discoveries gave to trade and 

 manufactures, and to the development of the coal, 

 iron, and other industries in this country. Indeed, Mr. 

 Tooke seems to place them in the first rank among 

 the causes of the increased demand for labour, and of 

 the commercial and manufacturing prosperity that 

 existed. Referring to the state of things in 1848 to 

 1856, he writes : " But the production year by year of 

 large and increasing quantities of new gold, not only 

 in California, but since 185 1 in Australia, has so 

 changed the aspect of nearly every question relating to 

 the supply of, and the demand for, commodities — and 

 relating to the demand for, and the wages obtained 

 by, labourers, skilled and unskilled — that to have at- 

 tempted any systematic investigation of prices during 

 the past nine years without assigning a prominent 

 place to an examination of the facts connected with 

 the New Gold — and without attempting to trace the 

 more important consequence arising from the Influx — 

 would have been to misconceive wholly the nature of 

 the task which had been undertaken." {" History of 

 Prices," Vol. V.) 



Again, in the sixth volume of his work on the same 

 subject, he states : " The wages of labour, particularly 

 of unskilled labour, have risen in proportion of 15 to 

 20 per cent, and since 1850 the social and commercial 

 phenomena which have been most conspicuous in this 

 country have been the effects produced by the gold 

 discoveries in doubling the export trade, and in direct- 

 ing to useful purposes pauper and surplus labour." 



Those who hold the doctrine of free imports as an 



