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complaining that their potatoes were rotting in the ground for want of labour 

 to dig tliem, and of roads to convey tliem to market. I paid 4s. per B). for 

 butter, Is. 8d. per quart for milk, 6s. a dozen for eggs (they had just before 

 been 9s. per dozen), 2s. 6d. for a cauliflower, and Is. 6d. for a cabbage. The 

 health of the town population then suffered for the want of fresh vegetables. 

 Bread was more than Is. for the 4ib. loaf, and had been higher. Labour was 

 20s. a day, and yet the labouring classes really suffered from the insufficiency 

 of their wages to purchase food and other necessaries. Everything seemed out 

 of joint. A turkey cost 50s. In 1862, eight years afterwards, I could buy 

 similar turkeys for 7s. 6d. Oats were 20s. per bushel, and hay £24 per ton. 

 Fine times for farmers ! you will exclaim. Not so, however, for the greater 

 part of these high prices was lost and wasted in the cost of conveyance. 

 I shall have to recur to this part of the subject in treating of another branch 

 of railway economy. 



Hitherto, I have only taken into account the goods traffic, but the passenger 

 traffic is of neai-ly equal importance j and if we were now considering comfort, 

 health, and social advantages, 1 could show that the carriage of passengers is 

 even of more imjDortance than the transport of commodities. In the early days 

 of the gold discovery, the coach fare from Melbourne to Ballaarat was £6, and 

 I believe even more. As road-making pi^oceeded, the fare was reduced to <£4, 

 then to £3, and, during some short periods of competition, even to less. It 

 was about one-third higher to Sandhurst, which was a long, dreary, and 

 fatiguing journey. The charge to Ballaarat for a first-class ticket is now, I 

 think, 30s. ; and about 35s. or 40s. to Sandhurst, and the second-class fare is 

 about two-thirds of the first. I cannot be quite certain of these rates, as I 

 have not the last Bradshaw. Even the second-class accommodation is in every 

 respect more comfortable than that of the best constructed coaches. Travelling 

 has of course greatly increased. Taking the short stages with the long, it is 

 perhaps ten times what it was in the old coaching days. A man can now go 

 to Ballaarat or Castlemaine, transact his business, dine with a friend, or marry 

 a wife, and return without fatigue to Melbourne in the same day. The saving 

 of time, the increase of comfort, the absence of fatigue, are gains which really 

 possess a money value, though they baffle a money estimate. The mother can 

 with ease visit a sick child, the daiighter a dying parent. These, and similar 

 advantages, cannot be set down in figures, yet they are gains for which every 

 one is willing to pay in shape of tax. Taking the money gains alone upon 

 the passenger traffic, I am convinced that it is not an over-estimate to set it 

 down at between £300,000 and £400,000 a-year, spread over a very large 

 proportion of the whole population of Victoria, who are becoming, under the 

 new railway facilities, as much a travelling people as the Americans. Thus, 

 then, wdth a population of about three-quarters of a million, we have a total 

 gain of nearly one million. Indeed, in the present year, it probably exceeds 

 that amount. 



