“It’s no often Anster gets a blink of your daughter. Is Miss Katie to stay lang?” asked a young farmer, whom Katie’s dress and manner had awed into humility, as she intended they should.
“Katie, ye’re no often so mim. Whatfor can ye no answer yoursel?” said Mrs Stewart.
“Lady Anne is away to England with Lady Betty—for Lord Colville’s ship’s come in,” said Katie sedately. “There’s nobody at the Castle but Lady Erskine. Lady Anne is to be back in three weeks. She says that in her letter.”
In her letter! Little Katie Stewart then receives letters from Lady Anne Erskine! The young farmer was put down; visions of seeing her a countess yet crossed his eyes and disenchanted him. “She’ll make a bonnie lady; there’s few of them like her; but she’ll never do for a poor man’s wife,” he muttered to himself as he withdrew a step or two from the vicinity of the unattainable sour plums.
But not so Willie Morison. “I’ll be three weeks of sailing mysel,” said the mate of the schooner, scarcely above his breath; and no one heard him but Katie.
Three weeks! The petulant thoughts rushed round their fortress, and vowed to defend it to the death. But in their very heat, alas! was there not something which betrayed a lurking traitor in the citadel, ready to display the craven white flag from its highest tower?
GOLD—EMIGRATION—FOREIGN DEPENDENCE—TAXATION.
Before the following pages issue from the press, the contest involved in the Parliamentary Elections will be over. It is useless to speculate, therefore, on what will so soon be determined by a result which, for the time at least, will settle who is to hold the reins of power. Recording our confident hope that the Conservative party will obtain such a majority as may enable them to carry on the Government on those principles which can alone heal the wounds and allay the feuds which the policy of their predecessors have implanted in this country, it is of more importance at this time to inquire into the great and lasting interests of the nation, and the present circumstances in our ever-changing situation which most loudly call for attention, and must ere long force themselves upon the consideration of whatever Government is placed by the people at the head of affairs. The observations we are to offer are chiefly of a practical and remedial kind; for the changes to which they refer are such as are altogether beyond the reach of dispute, and on which all parties, however much divided on other subjects, are agreed.
The first of these subjects, in point of importance, beyond all question, both to the present interests and future destinies of the Empire, is the vast increase in the annual supply of gold for the use of the globe, which the late discoveries in California and Australia have made. Here, fortunately, there is no room for dispute; and, in fact, there is no dispute about the facts. It is conceded on all sides that the annual supply of the precious metals, before the new discoveries, was somewhat below £10,000,000 a-year; of which about £6,000,000 was the annual waste by the wearing of coin, or the absorption of the precious metals in objects of luxury; and that before the end of 1851 this annual supply had risen to £30,000,000. There has been very little addition to the annual waste; so that the quantity annually added to the sum total of the precious metals in this world has been multiplied at least fivefold during the last three years. It has risen from £4,000,000 annually to at least £20,000,000. And the recent accounts from Australia leave no room for doubt that this increase in the supply, how great soever, will be largely added to; for it appears that from 9th October to 9th April the yield of the Australian gold mines was above £3,000,000; and there appears to be no limits to the extent of the auriferous regions. It is quite certain, therefore, that the annual addition to the stock of the precious metals in the globe, will this year, and for a long period to come, be at least SIX TIMES what it was before Providence revealed these hidden treasures to a suffering world.
The effect of this upon the price of gold may be judged of by the fact, that that metal is now selling at Melbourne for £3 an ounce, while the Mint price is £3, 17s. 10½d., which the bank is still obliged to give for all the gold brought to its doors! Sir Robert Peel said that “he could not by any effort of his understanding form any other idea of a pound sterling but a certain determinate weight of gold metal;” and the Times, in the pride of its heart at the vast effect of his monetary system in depressing the price of produce of every soil, and enhancing the value of money, boasted, within the last three years, that that system “had rendered the sovereign worth two sovereigns.” We have not observed lately anything said in that able journal about the incomparable steadiness of a standard of value founded on “a determinate weight of gold;” nor do we hear any repetition, by its gifted authors, of its boasts about having rendered “the sovereign worth two sovereigns.” On the contrary, according to their usual system, when they see a change fairly set in, and likely to be lasting, they have gone at once over to the other side, and fairly out-Heroded Herod in their estimate of the prodigious effect upon general prices of the vast additions recently made to the metallic treasures of the world. The journal which was so strong upon Sir Robert Peel’s policy having rendered the sovereign worth two sovereigns, has lately issued the following just and striking observations upon the probable effect on prices of all sorts of the entire repeal of that policy by the hand of nature:—