116 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



Protection, that Victoria lost the pride of place she then occupied 

 as the wealthiest, the most populous, and the most attractive place 

 on the Australian Continent. 



In the beginning of 1865 the colony was in a thoroughly sound 

 position. Customs' duties were collected on only about a dozen 

 articles, all of them of the nature used for revenue purposes the 

 world over. The total revenue, at a little over 3,000,000, left a 

 surplus on the year's expenditure. The public debt of 8,000,000 

 had been spent on railways and water supply to Melbourne, both 

 distinctly remunerative works. Eighty thousand miners, nearly one- 

 half of the male population between twenty-five and fifty years of 

 age, were at work producing gold to the value of 6,000,000 a year. 

 Half a million acres of land were under cultivation already, and 

 though this represented but a fraction of the area alienated, the 

 importation of breadstuffs had been reduced to less than half what 

 it was in 1855. The only obstacle to the colony feeding itself lay 

 in the difficulty of securing sufficient and suitable labour for this 

 primary industry. There were 118 flour mills throughout the 

 country ; no less than 782 manufactories, using machinery amongst 

 them valued at 1,773,000, and exporting their products to the 

 adjacent colonies to the value of 230,000 in 1864. Wages were 

 on the average quite double what would have been earned by the 

 same class in England, while, with the exception of house rent, the 

 cost of living was very considerably less. Trade was active, employ- 

 ment was abundant, and the community as a whole was basking 

 in prosperity. 



Less than thirty years later the same community was in the 

 depths of despondency, losing the cream of its population, stagger- 

 ing under an unbearable burden of debt and a greatly enhanced 

 cost of living. The Government railways had accumulated a 

 deficiency of some 8,000,000, and were being worked at a loss 

 of 300,000 a year. Wages, after a few years of artificial inflation, 

 had fallen to such a level, that the leader of the Labour Party in 

 Parliament had told the House that the workers in Victoria " had 

 never been in such a deplorable condition as at present," and the 

 same authority asserted that in a large number of Victorian indus- 

 tries the hands were worse off than the London dock labourers, 





