1844 the value of our exports averaged 2,000,000l. Of late years they have scarcely averaged 1,000,000l., and, small as is our export trade to China, it is large in comparison with that of other countries. Thus the annual exports of the United States to China do not exceed 300,000l., and the exports which are sent from the Continent are still more insignificant. Great Britain consequently becomes, to a great extent, the emporium of Eastern produce. The products of the East are brought to England, and then again are distributed not only over the continent of Europe, but even over Canada and the United States; and the settlement of the balances of the Indian and Chinese trade is made through England for the civilized world. Until 1850 the adjustment of this commerce required the export of only a small amount of silver to the East; but a drain then commenced, which has advanced with steady rapidity, and in 1856 this country alone exported to the East the enormous sum of 14,500,000l. of silver. The silver coinage of France has, to a great extent, supplied this silver. 45,000,000l. have been thus abstracted from her silver coinage in six years, from 1852-1858. Gold has supplied its place. The absorption of so much gold in this way has induced M. Chevalier, in his work "On the probable Fall in the Value of Gold," so admirably translated by Mr. Cobden, to describe France as a parachute, which has retarded the fall in the value of gold. France has supplied so much silver

Firstly. Because of the large amount of silver coinage she formerly possessed; and

Secondly. Because, unlike us, she has a double standard. Any slight variation in the fixed relative values of these two metals will induce all payments to be made in one of these metals alone. Every extension of credit enables a certain amount of the circulating medium to be dispensed with; and it is probable that our vastly increased commerce and trade has required little, if any greater quantity of the circulating medium for all those transactions which may be described as wholesale; but, as I have before observed, a great increase in the national capital must have accompanied this commercial progress. The wagefund is a component part of this capital. Wages are almost always paid in coin. This points to another way in which much of the new gold has been absorbed. The possibility of accounting for the absorption of the new supplies of gold, confirms the opinion that its value has not yet declined. But the fact that there has been no reduction, proves that gold would have greatly risen in value had not these supplies been forthcoming. The rise, too, would have been sudden, and therefore most serious. The conditions of every monied contract would be altered, the national debt would be a more severe burden, and the extension of our commerce with the East would meet with the most difficult obstacle.

When feudal Europe ripened into commercial Europe, the gold of America was discovered; and now that free trade has inaugurated a new social and commercial era, the gold of Australia and California is ready at hand to aid the progress.

M. Chevalier asserts that henceforth the value of gold will rapidly decline at least fifty per cent. I regard this as a much too confident prophecy. The wage-fund of most countries is increasing, in some cases most rapidly. This will absorb a great deal of gold. Our commerce with the East is so anomalous, that prophecies seem to me to be useless. Every year

there is a constantly greater quantity of Eastern produce required, and therefore this increased commerce will very soon annually absorb, instead of 14,000,000. of specie, 20,000,000l., unless some great change in the habits of the Chinese induces them to consume more European commodities. On such a point who will hazard a prediction? Thus, in a few years, the East will absorb all the silver of the West. Shall we then be able to induce the Chinese to take gold as readily as they do now silver? There is another consideration which seems to me to be not sufficiently noticed. A change in the value of gold always generates a counteracting force, whose tendency is to restore the metal to its former value. Suppose the supplies of gold continue to be the same as they are now, and that after a certain time gold declines in value. Gold-digging is not-I may say, cannot be-permanently more profitable than other employments. Directly a decline in the value of gold takes place, gold-digging will to many become less profitable than other labour. They will therefore cease to dig; this will diminish the aggregate supply of gold, and this diminution will tend to restore its value. I will now proceed I will now proceed to explain in what way the gold discoveries have assisted the advance of Australia. Production has three requisites :

Firstly. Appropriate natural agents. Secondly. Labour to develop the resources of nature.

Thirdly. This labour must be sustained by the results of previous labour, or in other words, by capital.

Long previous to 1848 the great natural resources of Australia were known, vast tracts of fertile land had been explored, and her climate had been pronounced healthy. There was an overplus of labour in our own country, and much additional capital would have been at once accumulated had an eligible Investment presented itself. Little labour and capital were, however, applied in Australia, and her advance was slow. We know the discovery of gold changed all this; let us then seek the

secret of the change. Previous to the gold discoveries, the chief field for the investment of capital was agriculture. In a young country farming operations meet with many obstacles. The stock

Aus

and implements are expensive, no steady supply of labour can be ensured; and without the investment of a great deal of capital in roads, and other such works, produce can with difficulty be brought to market; and when it is brought, the demand is uncertain. The same consider. ations apply to manufactures, and also to general mining operations; for lead, copper, and iron mines require most expensive machinery, and a large co-operation of labour. This explains the usual slow progress of colonies, even when they offer the greatest industrial advantages. But as soon as it was heard that gold was spread over a large breadth of the Australian continent, thousands flocked to share the spoil. They only took the simplest tools; they needed no capital, but just sufficient food to support them while labouring; and each one felt that he could work independently, and risk nothing more than his labour and his passage-money. tralia, having thus suddenly obtained an abundance of manual labour, possessed two of the requisites of production; the third, capital, was quickly supplied to her. The savings of the gold-diggers formed a large capital, and English capital now flowed in even too broad a stream to supply the wants of this labouring population. Australia for a time suffered much inconvenience, because gold-digging absorbed much of the labour which had been previously applied to other employments; not that more was earned in this pursuit than in others, but there is a magic spell in the name of gold. Gold-digging has the excitement of a lottery, and the chances of a lottery are always estimated at more than their true value. After a time, other pursuits absorbed a due proportion of labour, and thus Australia possessed every attribute of industrial success, and her future prosperity was established.

About 1848, England was suffering

from those ills which political economy attributes to over population. Wages were becoming lower, and increasing population necessarily made food more expensive.

Ireland had famine, and

we had most deplorable distress. I have mentioned that the discovery of gold acted more powerfully than any other circumstance to induce a large emigration from Great Britain. Any decrease in the number of those who seek employment must cause a rise of wages, but emigration from a country like our own effects even a more important advantage. I have before observed that the price of agricultural produce at any time must be such as will return the ordinary rate of profit to the worst land in cultivation. If, therefore, the wants of an advancing population cause more land to be brought into cultivation, the food which is thus raised involves a greater expenditure of labour and capital than that which was before produced, and thus as population advances food becomes dearer. In a thickly peopled country there are two obstacles to the material prosperity of the poor

Firstly. The number of those competing for employment reduces wages. Secondly. Food rises in value as it becomes necessary to strain the resources of the fertile land.

Emigration, therefore, has increased not only the monied wages, but the real wages of our labourers. In some of our colonies, such as Canada, so little of the fertile land has been cultivated, that for some time the greater the immigration is to those parts, the more abundant will be the supply of cheap food which will be exported to our own country. Emigration therefore, as it were, adds a tract of fertile land to our own soil.

Again, labour is remunerated from capital. The amount saved, or in other words, the capital which is accumulated, is regulated by the returns which this capital will obtain. If population is stationary, and capital increases, wages will rise and profits will fall; if, on the other hand, capital increases, the rate of profit will fall.

Can we

affirm anything with certainty about the tendency of profits, when capital and population both increase? Any augmentation in the numbers of the labourers must exercise an influence to reduce wages, and therefore to raise profits. But there is another consideration. In a thickly peopled country like Great Britain, the returns of the RegistrarGeneral plainly indicate that the increase of population amongst the labouring class is determined by the expense of living, for the number of marriages invariably increases or decreases as food is cheap or dear. Such being the case, there is always a portion of the labouring class whose wages are very little more than sufficient to provide them with the necessaries of life. Such wages I will describe as minimum wages. Since we have seen that an increasing population must always have a tendency to make food dearer, these minimum wages must, from this cause, have a constant tendency to rise.

This acts as a counteracting force to reduce profits. We can now attribute another important influence to emigration. It raises wages by reducing the number of the labouring class; but since, as I have said, it adds a tract of fertile land to our own soil, it cheapens food, and since cheap food prevents a reduction in the rate of profit, there will be a greater inducement to save. The capital of the country will from this cause become augmented, and there will be therefore a larger fund to be distributed amongst the wage-receiving population. When emigration is thus considered, its vast social and economical importance can be understood. Mr. J. S. Mill, who, perhaps more than any other person, has systematically thought upon the means to ameliorate the condition of the poor, emphatically insists, that it is necessary to make a great alteration in the condition of, at least, one generation-to lift one generation, as it were, into a different state of material comfort.

He attributes little good to slight improvements in the material prosperity of the poor, because, unless accompanied

with a change in their social habits, the advantage is sure, as it were, to create its own destruction, by encouraging an increase of population. It seems that there can be no agency so powerful as emigration to effect a decided change in the material condition of the poor. I therefore regard the discovery of gold

to be of the utmost social value to England, for it has been so potent an agent to induce emigration, that it has caused Australia in ten years to advance from a settlement and become a nation, with all the industrial appliances of the oldest and most thriving commercial community.

WHY are we volunteering? What's the meaning of it all? What is it that is making noblemen, and men of fortune, and lawyers, and merchants, and tradesmen, and clerks, and artisans, give up their usual pursuits, sacrifice their leisure hours (often few enough, Heaven knows), and incur trouble, and expense, and drudgery, that they may acquire the manual and platoon exercises, be able to hit a target at 200 yards, and know how to form open column, and to wheel into line?

It is high time for us all to be asking ourselves seriously, what we do mean? whether we have any meaning at all in the matter? For, either the nation is drifting into a gigantic piece of tomfoolery, of uniform-wearing, and swashbucklerism, and playing at Soldiers, which will last for a summer or two, and then be quietly extinguished, with the approval of all rational men, never to be revived again in our day; or she is rousing herself to undertake seriously one of the hardest tasks which she can set herself, and yet one which, successfully accomplished, will yield results, the worth whereof no living Englishman can estimate.

On the surface of our volunteering there are signs which might lead a casual observer to the tom-foolery belief. We hear of absurd persons going about, arrayed in sashes or sidearms to which

they have no right; the Government has even had, at the request of the commanders of corps, to issue notices and prohibitions against such. In one quarter, distressed and distressing volunteers are whining in the cheap papers that the Guards don't salute them; another set are blustering that their unhappy rank is not recognised at Court, and threatening an ungrateful Sovereign with the withdrawal of their services as a penalty for her want of appreciation. The uniform question has attained a melancholy importance; there has been much childishness shown in the choosing of officers. Nevertheless, on the whole, he who drew from such surface-signs the tom-foolery conclusion would be mistaken.

Let any man go to a parade of Volunteers, and just look at the rank and file, and he will be convinced. They are as a rule men, and not boys; full-grown men, with professions and trades to work at, and families to support, or, at any rate, bread to earn for themselves. There is, probably, not one in five of them who has got over the feeling of dismay, bordering on disgust, which comes on him, whenever he finds himself walking about the streets in a uniform; not one in a hundred who has not other pursuits to which he would rather give the time which volunteering swallows up ruthlessly. To many the

time is a serious pecuniary sacrifice. And yet they come time after time, and work undeniably well while they are at it, and bear meekly in the streets the frequent "Who shot the dog?" and "As you were," of the youthful Cockney.

You believe, then, that enough Englishmen are downright in earnest about volunteering to make it a serious national movement? Yes. Then be good enough to refer to the question put at the head of this paper, "What do these Englishmen who are downright in earnest mean by it all?”

A good many of us, perhaps, have hardly had time to answer that question to ourselves; our volunteering time has been so well filled, what with goose step, and squad drill, and manual and platoon drill, and position and bayonet drill, and battalion drill, and skirmishing drill, and these last abominably moist parade days in the parks, not to mention bye-days of what we may call foreign service on Putney Heath or the Scrubbs. However, let us see. Of course not one of us means just the same thing as his rear file, or right-hand man, or any other man of his corps. The pivot man of the right section, No. 1, means that he for his part hopes some day to fight a Zouave; while he of the left, No. 2, desires mainly an appetite for dinner. Nevertheless, to a considerable extent we do all mean the same thing. There are a certain number of objects which we all aim at, though some care most to hit one, and some another.

What, for instance ?

Well, first and foremost, we mean that English homes are to be made absolutely, and beyond all question, safe. Love and reverence for home, for our women and children, for roof-tree and hearth; upon that we found ourselves before all. That, many of us may believe, perhaps, to be at the bottom of all true fighting, and of all true preparation for fighting; whatever war-cry or banner may be in the air, all true fighting must, we should hold, base itself somehow on this, or be wild, mad work,-probably, devil's work. No need to dwell on this part of our meaning. Has not our lau

reate gathered it all into eight deathless lines:

"Thy voice he hears in rolling drums "That beat to battle where he stands, Thy face across his fancy comes "And gives the battle to his hands; "One moment, while the trumpets blow, "He sees his brood around thy knee; "The next, like fire he meets the foe, "And strikes him dead for thine and thee."

Then again, we mean that we are thoroughly and fairly sick of invasion panics-that in this last twelve years we have several times been eating our hearts out in shame and rage at seeing our great country whipped into wild terror by wild talk in the newspapers; and that we don't want to stand much more of this sort of thing. We mean something more, too, than being don with panics, we mean that we want our Governments to steer a straight and steady course through the tangled drift weed and icebergs of the ocean of modern politics: insulting no one, cringing to n one; but standing faithfully and sternly by every righteous cause and every righteous man. They have not always done this of late; we have seen the weak bullied and the strong flattered, and have not enjoyed the sight. And now, when all old forms of national and social life in Europe are pitching in the heavy rising sea, ready to break from their moorings, and drift no man knoweth where, we want to see our country an ark to which all eyes may turn, and which will lend help to all who need it and deserve it,-"A refuge from the "storm, a shadow from the heat, and the "blast of the terrible ones." This she may be, this she ought to be,-this she can never be unless our Governments feel that they have a nation behind them on whom they can rely. England will want her whole strength in the times that are coming. We Volunteers mean that she shall have it ready for use in the most telling form; and we believe that volunteering is the way to help her to it, and the only way.