emporia of trade
rose along the coast; and a country that so recently was almost a
desert, now promises to become one of the great marts of the commerce
of the world. If this has been the case in California, the process
will be much easier in Australia, where the rudiments of various
businesses already exist, and where the staple articles of produce are
such as can hardly be pushed to a superfluous extent.

The true calamity, however, under which the fixed colonists, the
producers of the staples, suppose themselves to suffer, is the change
occasioned in the price of labour by the golden prospects of the
diggings. On this question there is always considered to be two
antagonistical interests--that of the employers, and that of the
employed; the former contending for the minimum, and the latter for
the maximum rate. But this is a fallacy. The interest of the two is
identical; and for these obvious reasons, that if wages be too high,
the capitalist must cease to produce and to employ; and if too low,
the working population must sink to the position of unskilled
labourers at home, and eventually bring about that very state of
society from which emigration is sought as an escape. In supposing
their interests to be antagonistical, the one party reasons as badly
as the other; but, somehow, there always attaches to the bad reasoning
of the employed a stigma of criminality, from which that of the other
is free. This is unjust enough in England, but in Australia it is
ridiculous. A capitalist goes out, provided with a sum so small as to
be altogether useless at home as a means of permanent support, but
which, in the colony, he expects, with proper management, to place him
for the rest of his life in a position of almost fabulous prosperity.
These cheering views, however, he confines to his own class. The
measure of his happiness will not be full unless he can find cheap
labour, as well as magnificent returns. For this desideratum he will
make any sacrifice. He will take your paupers, your felons--your
rattlesnakes; anything in the shape of a drudge, who will toil for
mere subsistence, and without one of the social compensations which
render toil in England almost endurable.

We are never sorry to hear of the high price of labour in countries
where the employers live in ease and independence; and we join
heartily in the counsel to the higher class of working-men in this
country given by Mr Burton in his _Emigrants Manual_--'nev