NEW SOUTH WALES

The early years of this period were marked in New South Wales by general depression in public affairs and commercial stagnation. The finances of the colony were in a very unsatisfactory state, the expenditure in almost every year from 1862 to 1872 exceeding the income, and the various treasurers seemed unable to devise a scheme for making ends meet. No doubt Australia laboured at this time under a reaction from the fever of the gold discoveries, and although this reaction affected New South Wales very much less than Victoria, as there was at the beginning of the period an actual increase in its production of gold, it did not escape the penalty which nations as well as individuals pay for undue excitement. Emigration from Europe fell off very greatly, and but for the action, not very vigorous it must be confessed, of the New South Wales Government in assisting immigration, there would have been scarcely any arrivals in the colony from Europe. Speaking generally, the immigrant who came to Australia on his own initiative and at his own expense made a better colonist than the Government-assisted immigrant, and the lack of such persons was felt the more, because the colony had lost and continued to lose a large number of its citizens to Queensland.