OVERSEAS TRADE AFTER 1890 93 
borrowing, and from an abrupt disturbance in the rhythm of 
trade, are to be clearly traced in the period now being reviewed. 
Up to the year 1880 the overseas trade of Australia exhibited 
all those features that the economic history of young and un- 
developed countries would lead us to expect. After that year 
8 natural and inevitable transition towards maturity as a 
borrower was forced on by the stupendous volume of capital 
imported. By 1885 it was becoming apparent that the stage 
was arriving in-which the interest on old loans was becoming 
larger than the amount of new loans contracted each year. 
Australia was rapidly—far too rapidly as events proved— 
becoming a mature borrowing country. Owing to the sudden 
cessation of the influx of capital in 1893, through a complexity 
of causes, external as well as internal, the interest on old loans 
became immediately and unexpectedly more than five times the 
amount of the new loans that it was found expedient to raise. 
This catastrophic pinching of the financial shoe, in addition to 
the other factors still to be examined, was sufficient to ex- 
plain the limping industrial and commercial gait of the country 
for the succeeding decade. This situation is summarized in the 
following table: 
TaBLE XV 
Australian Public Loans and Annual Interest! 
{In Millions Sterling) 
1883 
1884 
1885 
1886 
L887 
1888 
1889 
1890 
1891 
892 
1893 
1894 
L895 
ear. 
New loan. 
14-629 
12755 
12-356 
7-529 
6-375 
5-230 
11-874 
7720 
8230 
8-147 
8-321 
1-179 
2.184 
Annual 
interest 
and charges. 
2:904 
4-370 
4-462 
4-601 
4-865 
5-112 
5-367 
5-617 
5-871 
8-117 
6-859 
7-066 
7.008 
Compiled by Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics.