34 PROSPERITY AND CRISIS AFTER 
The correspondence between gold production and total 
imports is the first fact of importance. Adjusting the ‘lag’ of 
twelve months needed for the gold production of a period to 
be translated into the imports of the following period, it will be 
seen that the consilience is perfect and affords ample ground for 
the main contention that the effect of the gold production upon 
the trade balance was exactly the effect that the introduction 
of so much capital would have had. 
Tasre IIT 
Gold Production and Imports, New South Wales and Victoria 
Gold Production (In £m.). Imports. 
Year. 
~w 
Total. 
ag. 
Total. 
1852 
1853 
1854 
1855 
1856 
1857 
1858 
5-8 
02 
)8 8-6 
0-7 117 
7 13-9 
0-7 11-0 
1-1 10-1 
19-5 
14.0 
9-4 
124 
14.8 
117 
11-2 
9 
“3 
+0 
=7 
3:5 
39 
6-1 
1 
58 
377 
12-0 
15-G 
17-5 
15-1 
6-0 
22-1 
18-3 
16-7 
20:5 
240 
21-2 
The balance of trade for the period affords some striking 
evidence of the tendency of a young country passing through a 
stage of exuberant prosperity to ‘outrun the constable’ in the 
matter of imports. It was a period, also, in which public 
borrowing certainly increased but not at an unjustifiable rate. 
In 1852 New South Wales was alone in the possession of a public 
debt, and that amounted to a mere £212,000. This had risen 
by 1855 to £1,011,300, in which year Victoria made a beginning 
by borrowing £500,000. By 1860 the total debt for both colonies 
was £9,000,000 in round numbers, of which the Victorian share 
was £5,200,000. Taking into the account the amount of bullion 
and specie, both inwards and outwards, a pronounced change is 
observable in the trade balance after 1852, i.e. almost as early 
was limited to something like £3 per ounce. No wonder that enormous 
shipments of merchandise of every conceivable kind and character poured 
into the colonies, where they not only found a profitable market but could 
command returns in the shape of exchange or gold purchasable upon such 
advantageous terms. Nor marvel is it that prices soon found a more even level 
through all the available exports from the colonies being required to pay for the 
imports, which it should be mentioned included large shipments of British coin.’ 
' From Coghlan, Labour and Industry in Australia, and presumably based on the 
annual Statistical Abstract for Colonial Possessions published by the British Govern- 
ment. See also Tooke and Newmarch, History of Prices, pp. 791 ef seq.