THE BERRY INFLUENCE, 1875-1882 199 



solvency; all chairmen of Courts of General Sessions; all Police 

 Magistrates, Coroners and Wardens of Goldfields; the Engineer 

 in Chief of Kailways, Mr. Thomas Higinbotham ; a large number 

 of executive heads of important departments, and about a hundred 

 subordinate but mostly well-paid officials. The breaches of public 

 faith which such a proceeding involved were felt over a far wider 

 area than that represented by the retrenched officers and their 

 dependants. Law-abiding citizens who had anything to lose stood 

 aghast at what might happen next. Some members of the Cabinet, 

 ignoring the specious plea of necessity put forward by their chief, 

 frankly admitted that the move was an act of reprisal on the 

 Council, by hurting it through its friends, and one Minister of 

 the Crown openly declared that in the dismissal of Mr. Thomas 

 Higinbotham he had " had his revenge ". 



Much wild talk was indulged in by Ministerialists as to further 

 steps it might be found necessary to take in the way of practically 

 closing the port ; of issuing a paper currency to carry on with ; 

 and of confiscating the rights of holders of landed property sus- 

 pected of being auriferous. The 8th of January became historical in 

 Victorian annals as " Black Wednesday," a manufactured counter- 

 part of that "Black Thursday" in 1851 when nature had spread 

 ruin and desolation over the infant colony. Capital as usual took 

 the earliest alarm, mortgages were called up, property values de- 

 preciated with appalling suddenness, buyers held aloof, and many 

 forced sales showed a fall of over 50 per cent, within a few weeks. 

 Timid depositors hoarded their money, or transferred it to banks in 

 New South Wales. 



While wrath and consternation reigned in Melbourne, the 

 Governor took himself off to Portland to perform the ceremony 

 of formally opening the railway to that town. He could hardly 

 have got farther away from the centre of trouble without actually 

 leaving the colony. At the banquet which followed the ceremony 

 he was in his element, full of jovial banter, lauding his own impar- 

 tiality, ignoring the tempest that was raging in the Metropolis, and 

 with preposterous optimism predicting for Portland a future of un- 

 exampled prosperity as the Brindisi of Australia, the port of arrival 

 and departure of all the mail steamers in the years to come. But 



