lly to wool. We have stated that the production thereof, in New
South Wales, is likely to be checked by the attraction of the
gold-diggings; and still further, by the gradual abandonment of
indifferent or limited runs, which formerly supported a large number
of sheep, but which will not pay to work at present prices of wool and
labour. Therefore, if we bear in mind that Australia has furnished
half of the entire quantity of the wools imported into Great Britain,
and that the English buyers have hitherto been purchasing in
anticipation of a large annual increase from hence, which for the
present, at anyrate, will not be forthcoming, we think we need be
under no apprehension of lower prices than the present.'

It will be remarked, that this somewhat unfavourable report is made at
the end of the first six months of the gold-fever. That kind of
gold-seeking, however, which unsettles the habits of a population, and
represses the other pursuits of industry, is not likely to endure very
long in any country. It must give way in time to scientific mining,
which is as legitimate a business as any other, and which, by the
wealth it circulates, will tempt men into new avenues of industry, and
recruit, to any extent that may be desirable, the supply of labour.
Hitherto that supply has come in inadequate quantities, or from
polluted sources; but we have now precisely what the colony wanted--a
stream of voluntary emigration, which, in the process of time, when
skilled labour only can be employed, will flood the diggings, and its
superfluous portions find their level in the other employments
afforded by the country. That this will take place without the
inconvenience of a transition period, is not to be expected; but, upon
the whole, we look upon the present depression of the legitimate trade
of the colony as merely a temporary evil, arising out of circumstances
that are destined to work well for its eventual prosperity.

The same process, it should be observed, has already been gone through
in California. The lawless adventurers who rushed to the gold-fields
from all parts of the world subsided gradually into order from mere
motives of self-preservation; and as the precious metal disappeared
from the surface, multitudes were driven by necessity or policy into
employments more remunerative than digging. The large mining
population--the producers of gold--became the consumers of goods;
markets of all kinds were opened for their supply;