438 INFLUENCE OF RECENT GOLD DISCOVERIES ON PRICES. 



ing the quantity of the currency and consequently the proportion 

 which it bears to the commodities in circulation. 



All countries which have contributed a quota of their citizens to 

 swell the number of settlers in the gold regions (and what coun- 

 try has not ?) or which supply them with any portion of their 

 goods, must, in greater or less degree, feel the effects of each and 

 all of these processes, all of which are silently but constantly at 

 work, and have already, I feel .satisfied, extended much farther and 

 operated muchibore powerfully than is generally imagined. 



England and the United States were, as might have been antici- 

 pated, the countries most speedily and directly affected — England 

 from her connection with Australia, the States from their connec- 

 nection with California — and through England and the States the 

 effects were necessarily propagated by a species of commercial con- 

 duction to this country and to others. 



"We have thus indicated some of the processes by which the in- 

 fluence of the gold discoveries extended itself to foreign countries. 



As to the existence of these processes, or as to their tendencies 

 there is no room for doubt. It is, however, absolutely impossible to 

 measure their precise share either individually or collectively in the 

 general result. The forces which come under consideration in 

 the domain of practical political economy (unlike those with which 

 the mechanical philosopher has to deal) refuse to submit to rigid 

 measurement, and we must content ourselves with seeing the general 

 result towards which they severally contribute without hoping to 

 ascertain how much of the effect is due to each force separately. 



"Within a very few years California has withdrawn from the pro- 

 ducing classes of the States probably more than 50,000 able bodied 

 men. Australia in the same way has absorbed in a few years a large 

 portion of the productive labor of Great Britain. The entire emi- 

 gration from Great Britain to Australia, since the discovery of gold 

 there, is probably little short of a quarter of a million of souls. 



In both cases the sudden subtraction from the labour market of 

 the parent states of so considerable portion of the whole stock must 

 have had a direct and obvious tendency to raise the value of labour, 

 and consequently of all the products of labour, in those countries. 

 But more than this, the labourers thus transplanted to the gold 

 countries change their economic character — from being, for the most 

 part, producers of commodities in and for the home market, they 

 suddenly become consumers, and generally extravagant consumers, of 

 those very commodities. They enter the home markets, in fact, as 

 formidable competitors with the consumers they have left behind. 



