Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/122

 difference being, that in such a case there would have been land without either capital or labour. To use their own illustration, if the blood all goes to the head' a man dies just as much as if he was bled to death—the only difference being between apoplexy and inanition. If indeed government had in the first instance retained the money in its hands, and then lent it back to the purchasers of land under the system of Pfandebriefe, this might have acted like cataplasms to the natural body, and the circulating medium have been thus re-distributed through the body politic—in short, things would have been much where they started. But unfortunately there is no movement in civil or political life equivalent to that which follows the drill-sergeant's command of "as you were." But I do not think it is necessary to enter into these abstract considerations in order to account for a great deal of the difficulty which has arisen, the fact contained in the last part of this extract being sufficient to explain a great part of it—"What renders matters the worse, a large portion of the money paid for the land was borrowed." If it had been added that far the greater part of the land was bought on speculation, in order to sell again at an enormous advance to expected immigrants—that a small number of men, having a large command of capital, attempted a monopoly with this object, and that this speculation failed—that while the land yielded no return, the interest on the borrowed. capital had to be paid—sufficient cause of ruin might have been discovered without looking for its origin in the subsequent disbursement of the purchase-money, "this greatest, this most fatal error," as it is