COMMERCIAL DISTRESS. 505 



Who, indeed, four years ago, could have believed 

 that, above all other things, there should arrive a 

 glut in the labour market ? Such an event was 

 looked upon as absolutely impossible in the full tide 

 of prosperity that covered the island. Everything 

 wore a smiling aspect. The fields were heavy with 

 harvests, the roads crowded with traffic; gay equip- 

 ages filled the streets ; the settler's cottage or villa 

 was well supplied with comfort, and even with 

 luxuries ; crime, in a population of which the 

 majority were convicts or their descendants, was 

 less in proportion than in England ; in short, for 

 the first time, in 1840 the exports exceeded the 

 imports ; trade was brisk, agriculture increasing, 

 new settlers were arriving ; everything betokened 

 progress ; no one dreamed of retrogression or decay. 

 In four years all this has been reversed. We now 

 look in vain for the signs of prosperity that before 

 existed. In their place, we hear of complaints load 

 and deep; of insolvency, of reduction in the Govern- 

 ment expenditure ; of a falling off of trade ; of many 

 beggars, where none before were known ; of large 

 agricultural estates allowed partially to return to 

 their natural wildness ; of cattle and all stock sold 

 at half their original cost, and of every symptom of 

 agricultural and commercial distress. I may further 

 add, that the funds derived from the sale of Crown 

 lands in Tasmania in the year 1841, amounted to 

 £58,000.; in 1844, to £2000. ; and in 184o, to 

 nothing. The revenue, in the same time, has 



