METAPHYSICS OF GOLD-FINDING.
GOODNESS is not the one popular attraction for the English people at present. Even if we could " realize " a piece of unadulterated goodness, free from the stamp of prudential self-seeking, it would not" draw " half BO well as a piece of cleverly-acted goodness. It is not happiness that suffices to draw men out of the rooted bed of habit ; nor is the certainty of a road to competence, or we should have crowds floe'king to Australia for the opportunities which there lie open to average intelligence and industry. But Australia had no such attractions for the multitude as the one single element of gold has had. Tens upon tens of thousands in the year are going after the pursuit of gold-digging ; and they continue to go, notwith- standing the true stories of frequent disappointment, of failure, of absolute penury. Nor is it through ignorance. It is true that occasion- ally a man shall dig a fortune in a day ; and if he persevere, he may become a capitalist in a season. But for the single wight that thus succeeds, there are many who find in the now celebrated Canvass Town the reality of pauperism and starvation which is the vast shadow of that one conspicuous prize. Nay, if you take the certain part,—if you give the man every favourable circumstance of strength, good opportunity, fortunate field, fine weather, and enduring health,—then, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, he shall realize a very moderate return. So gold is only to be got by labour, after all ; and when got, it is neither happiness, nor luxury, nor even food. And the hard work, unlike that of the English " navigator " or fork-grinder, is attended by considerable danger on the side of "the bush." By this time all these chances are thoroughly known. It is also better known now than it was five or ten years ago, that if a man in fair health, with average brains and an average knowledge of industry, go to an Australian colony and adapthimself to such work as he finds, then he shall begin a course of sure and hopeful employment. After a few years of easy, well-paid, or at least well-fed labour, he shall be enabled to lay by such accumu- lations as render him ; a small proprietor, and place him upon the way to positive affluence and to a certain provision for his chil- dren. Many a man who left this country a labourer is now a landowner ; and that same path is still open to the same class. Nay, the newly-augmented wealth of the country renders the pursuit more certain of success. Yet the numbers pursuing that path have not shown any corresponding increase ; while the numbers pursuing the gold through the penury of Canvass Town or the hard labours of the Diggings, the dangers of the bush and the lottery-uncertainty of the treasure-trove, remain steadily at an amount which alarms economists with the question what is to become of all the people?
It is not surprising that the prospect of material comfort should be insufficient to draw men, especially ignorant men, from the ties of home and the inertia of existence in an old country. The sur- prising fact is, that the other bait, with its notorious attendants of hard work, penury, and danger, does suffice to draw such multi- tudes across the ocean and around the globe.
It is not the amount of the riches,—because there are perhaps as many men rich through plain industry and providence, as through the sudden finding of golden lumps in the Australian desert. It is more likely to be the impression made upon the mind by the sudden acquisition of riches. Immediately to be rich, is a gift almost of the fairy tale, and men will go through much danger !and even humiliation for a chance of that beatific windfall. There is something, too, in the feeling of gradual aoquisition of better means, that does not present the contrast which is the real source of the enjoyment in the sudden riches. Love! Edgeworth men- tions a butler who had a fortune left him, and who, instead of in- vesting it in an annuity, retiring, and ending his days in quiet, spent it all in a year, and returned to his master's sideboard, on the deliberate principle of tasting the best of life : that butler is only an example of many a man who wants to bring sudden for- tune into immediate contact with his old neediness.
We are indeed inclinectto think that the real motive is some- thing even less distinct and less practical than this estimate of sudden riches. Is it the instinctive awri sacra fames ; that love of gold which appears to be as much an appetite in mankind as the love of sugar—perhaps more universally so ? It is encouraged rather than suggested, perhaps, by the whole habit of conversation, which associates gold with wealth, and makes the metal the em- bodiment of affluence.
It is this blind instinct which has dragged such a considerable section of humanity around the world, in spite not only of the drawbacks to be encountered, but of the manifest sermon which any one elected from the number could have preached to his con- stituents. Wealth is not happiness ; gold is not what gold will purchase, without the "guinea stamp" to make it current, and other industry to produce what it will buy. Gold-digging is not the best of avocations,—neither certain in its success, nor com- fortable in its circumstances, nor sweet in itself. On the contrary, that occupation which concentrates the result chiefly in the indi- vidual, seldom has the sweetness for him who pursues it that is found in those that are said to yield him a less return but benefit his race. Of all the ordinary labouring occupations, agriculture caateris paribus, is-the most healthy and the happiest; and it is thai which gives perhaps the least of a concentrated return to the man who works at it ; while, on the other hand, the simple act of dig- ging his own bread stirs and prepares the ground for the crops of the children to follow : not so the sterile traces of an Australian digging. Still more sweet to the man that pursues it is that working at science which in its highest branches may be said to I be pursued with most success whenever pursued absolutely with- out thought of individual return, but not without thought of that wide and vague return the welfare of mankind. The philosopher takes his telescope at night, and devotes long hours to the search of the heavens ; his hair grows grey perhaps in solitude ; but his whole kind is wiser, wealthier, and happier, and he has in the pur- suit of their benefit realized a happiness which never can be found at the bottom of the Australian hole.
Australian digger, not having solaced toil with success, muses as above. "Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor "; and so at it again, "in hopes " ; though Certainty smiles not many leagues off in the always fruitful plain of agriculture.
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