ESSAYS. ESSAYS ON THE GOLD QUESTION, INTRODUCTORY. IN submitting to the judgment of the public that portion of the present volume which relates to the economic aspects of the Gold Question, I am desirous at the outset to guard myself against two possible misapprehensions. In the first place I desire it to be understood that the question discussed in the Essays on that subject is, not the gold discoveries and their consequences, but the much narrower one involved in the economical effects of the increased supplies of gold. The two problems, though to some extent mutually implicated, are substantially distinct. the one belongs the impulse given to the movement of population, which has resulted in the rapid peopling and definitive settlement of districts that without this stimulus might long have continued the slow and chequered career which up to that time had characterized their march, together with all the social and political consequences which have flowed from that B To |