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 undeveloped
 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 explain
 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.