MELBOURNE
Melbourne is one of the cleanest, best laid-out, and most
pleasantly-situated towns in the world. It lies on a succession of
gently undulating rises, about three miles from the sea, and, with the
suburbs, some of which extend down to the sea itself, has a population
of 290,000. The town itself is all laid out in rectangular blocks, and
the streets are very broad and well paved.
Everywhere there is a look of permanent solidity and accumulated wealth
most extraordinary in so young a town. It would be difficult to pick
out a street in London where, in the same space, there are as many
fine buildings as there are in Collins Street, one of the main streets
in Melbourne. The banks especially are most of them very handsome
buildings, both inside and out, and an enormous amount of money has
been spent on their construction.
The interior of the Bank of Victoria is modelled from that of the hall
of one of the palaces at Venice, and is most elaborately laid out with
marble floors and pillars and cedar fittings. Evidently the banks have
more money than they know what to do with, for the amount of dead
capital that they have sunk in building is astonishing. There are two
very good hotels, Menzies and the Oriental, one at each end of the
town, which is more than can be said of any other town in Australia,
except, perhaps, Townsville, the northernmost port of any importance
in Queensland, which, strange to say, possesses the next best hotel to
Melbourne of any town in the island.
The most conspicuous building in Melbourne is the Scotch Presbyterian
Church, which stands in the highest part of the town, and has a
handsome tower and spire about 200 feet high. Besides this there are
the English and Roman Catholic cathedrals, and endless smaller churches
of every size and denomination.
In spite of water being laid on everywhere and freely used, the dust
in the streets is very often appalling. It is not like ordinary dust
either; for the streets are all macadamised with a basalt rock, which
breaks up into a most detestably sharp, three-cornered, irritating
sort of dust, extremely trying to the eyes. At present the streets are
free from the Sydney abomination of tram-cars; but endless omnibuses
and hansoms pervade the town and suburbs, the fares being about half
as much again as those in London. There are open gutters along all the
streets, with little bridges over them at the crossings.
A good shower of rain floods the lower parts of Melbourne in a few
minutes, and sets these gutters running like a mill-race, three feet
deep; and I once saw a man nearly drowned in one of them. A crowd of
passengers were waiting patiently at the crossing till the river in
the street subsided; but this particular man seemed in a hurry. He was
going to be very smart, and leap over the deep gutter; but he made a
bad shot, and soused right into the middle of it. He was swept down
like a straw for a little distance, and then jammed under a low bridge,
from which position he was fortunately pulled out by the heels before
he was quite drowned.
The Public Library and Institute of Fine Arts is a very handsome
building in the Grecian style, open to the public every day of the
week except Sunday. The picture-gallery contains a good deal of
rubbish, and one or two good pictures, the best of which are Long’s
“Esther” and “Question of Propriety.”
In the middle of the town is a splendid tennis-court, reckoned by
lovers of the game to be one of the best in existence, and at one of
the clubs there is an excellent racquet-court.
The extraordinary proficiency of Australians in cricket, which enables
the representative eleven of a population of 3,000,000 to hold its own
against a country with 30,000,000, is less wonderful when one sees how
universally popular the game is in the colony. There is not a spare
piece of ground fit for a pitch anywhere round Melbourne that is not
covered with “larrikins” from six years old upwards, every evening
for nine months in the year. Their soul is in the game, and one and
all of them display a precocious talent for round-hand bowling, very
different to the sneaking underhand affected by the uneducated youth
of Great Britain. There are two or three excellent cricket-grounds in
Melbourne and the suburbs, the principal one in North Melbourne being
as good a ground as anyone could wish to play on, and the pavilions and
arrangements connected with it first-rate.
Much as I admire the indomitable pluck of the Australian cricketers
who have met the English teams both at home and in their own country,
beyond their skill in handling the weapons of their trade, there is
little to be said in praise of their conduct. While arrogating to
themselves the title of amateurs, they make it perfectly plain that
they follow cricket as a lucrative profession, and do not care to play
except for sufficient plunder, and they seldom lose an opportunity of
taking an unfair advantage of their opponents.
All round the suburbs of Melbourne there are local railways worked by
the Government. They run a frequent service of trains, and occasionally
have a smash. The inhabitants of Melbourne must be exceedingly nervous
upon wheels, for whenever there is an accident every single soul in the
train at the time goes straight for the public exchequer, and collects
heavy damages for a “shock to the nervous system.” An accident which
occurred recently on one of the suburban lines cost the Government, or
rather the colony, £140,000 in damages to the survivors.
The chances of an accident are infinitely increased by the Government
having insisted upon adopting an utterly worthless description of brake
for all the railways. Of course, like every other contract of the kind,
it was made a rank political job. While I was in Melbourne the papers
were full of it, and a furious discussion was raging in Parliament as
to the rival merits of the Westinghouse and Wood’s brake, and some of
the scenes in the House were most amusing.
A Commission was appointed to inquire into the practical working of
the two brakes, and their relative advantages, and an overwhelming
weight of evidence was brought to show that the Westinghouse brake
was infinitely the superior one of the two. But Mr. Straight, the
Commissioner of Railways at the time, whose legitimate business was
keeping a market-garden, inclined to the adoption of Wood’s brake, and,
entirely unassisted either by evidence or by common sense, succeeded in
carrying his point.
Seeing that the experiments of the Commission proved conclusively
that whereas the Westinghouse brake was one of the most perfect ever
invented, Wood’s brake was only automatic in the sense of its being
frequently impossible either to put it on or to take it off when it
was wanted, cynical critics were ill-natured enough to attribute Mr.
Straight’s support of the latter contrivance to a personal intimacy
with the inventor. Indeed, in the heat of a discussion on the subject
in the House, one of his opponents went so far as to challenge Mr.
Straight to finish the controversy by personal combat, and in delicate
allusion to his professional calling, wound up by shouting out, “Come
outside! come outside! and I’ll put a head on you like one of your own
---- cauliflowers!”
In spite of such heroic attempts to block Mr. Straight’s Bill, jobbery
finally triumphed over justice, and the inferior and more costly brake
was adopted on the local lines.
The port of Melbourne is Williamstown, six miles away, and here all
the big steamers and sailing vessels lie. But the river Yarra runs
up through the town, and vessels of 1500 tons can get up, and lie
alongside of the wharves in the middle of the town.
The Yarra is a foul, sluggish stream, brown in repose and the colour
of ink when stirred up, and smelling horribly all the time. On the
opposite side of it from the town, on a slight eminence, is situated
Government House, a large building with no pretensions to architectural
beauty of any kind; but the Botanical Gardens adjoining its grounds are
very prettily laid out, and nicely kept. St. Kilda and Brighton, the
two watering-places of Melbourne, are suburbs situated on the shores of
Hobson’s Bay, and their piers are a Sunday lounge for the inhabitants.
At both places there is excellent sea-bathing, and at St. Kilda an
extremely comfortable hotel.
The busy life in the town of Melbourne is a striking contrast to sleepy
Sydney, whose streets are thronged with crowds of loafing idlers. An
experienced eye can always pick out a Sydney man in a Melbourne crowd
as easily as it would detect a weevil in a beehive; and though in point
of wealth there is not much to choose between the two places, it is
easy to see that in Melbourne money is made, while in Sydney it grows.
The telephone is in use all over Melbourne, and the shares of the
Company that work it pay wonderfully well. In Collins Street is
situated the Melbourne Exchange and all the business men, brokers,
and mining men assemble there about noon every day to exchange notes;
and outside, in the racing season, there is always a whole crowd of
bookmakers, with their hats over their eyes, and pencil and notebooks
in their hands.
I soon found out that as far as floating a company on the Mount Britten
mines was concerned, I had come to Melbourne at a very bad time. In
the first place, money was getting rapidly very tight, and the banks
instead of being anxious to cram money down people’s throats at 6
per cent, suddenly refused to advance any more, and ran the rate of
interest on deposit up to 9 per cent.
Between them the banks of Australia at that time had lent £83,000,000,
and speculation was getting so furious that they determined to put
a stop to it. In the second place the Melbourne mining men had just
dropped £80,000 in a fearful swindle in New South Wales, and this,
coupled with the tightness of the money market, had for the time
pretty well stopped all speculation. The mining market was as flat as
a postage-stamp in the dust; and here is where the luck of gold-mining
comes in, for the men to whom I subsequently disposed of the mines told
me themselves that had I offered them for sale six months earlier they
would willingly have given me the same money for them that they dropped
in the New South Wales venture, for that mine was by far the best show
of the two.
With some trouble I succeeded in getting together a Syndicate to
consider my proposals as to the Mount Britten mines, and they sent up
an expert from Sandhurst to inspect the property. I had always heard
that the mining men of Melbourne were as great a lot of scoundrels as
there are in existence, but I was surprised to find that in addition to
this they were most of them perfectly ignorant of anything connected
with the practical or theoretical working of a mine. Most of them would
not know a gold-mine from a blue gum-tree, and the object of everyone
of them seemed to be to puff up the shares of the companies whose scrip
they held by lying reports, and to sell out at a profit.
So low had the morality of mining in Victoria sunk, that it was almost
impossible to float a company involving the shareholders in any
liability, and the industry suffered severely in consequence. To remedy
the evil, the Legislature has legalised an anomalous form of swindle
called a No-Liability Company, the shareholders in which can at any
moment abandon their interest in the concern.
The very title of a No-Liability Company is a contradiction in terms,
for I cannot conceive how there can be a company formed without
liability, nor how any body of men working without liability can obtain
credit for so much as a box of lucifer matches. Yet in the whole colony
of Victoria there is not a single gold-mining company that is not
registered as a No-Liability one.
But, as I told the votaries of the scheme, who pointed out triumphantly
that this system had revived the mining industry of Victoria, it only
shows that mining in Victoria is more mining in people’s pockets than
in the ground, and my subsequent acquaintance with the Melbourne mining
market tended most materially to strengthen my opinion. I at once
informed the Syndicate that if they did not choose to float a Limited
Liability Company on Mount Britten they could leave it alone, as I had
no idea of being connected with such a no-nation piece of rascality as
a company without any liability.
A fierce discussion ensued, for nothing terrifies a Melbourne mining
man so much as the prospect of having to pay calls. As long as a mine
pays dividends he is all there; but a call of threepence is generally
sufficient to make him sling up every share he holds. It is impossible
to conceive mining enterprise at a lower ebb than is represented by
a community whose mutual faith is so severely shaken as to make it
impossible to induce them to incur a joint liability for the purpose of
prospecting a mine.
In Queensland mining is conducted on very different principles, and the
dogged persistence with which comparatively poor men will go on paying
call after call into a mine that never returns them anything for years,
in the hope of striking gold, is as remarkable as is the impulse of
Victorians to throw up really valuable property the moment it ceases
to pay dividends, and, of course, does infinitely more to develop the
gold-bearing resources of the country.
The Syndicate, however, having received an excellent report of the
Mount Britten mines from the expert who went up to inspect them, and
from one of their own number who accompanied him, finally agreed to
my conditions, and a Limited Liability Company was formed to work the
properties. The price paid to my brother and myself was £11,000, and a
fourth share of the company in fully paid-up shares. After paying the
remaining original shareholders for their shares, and deducting the
cost of the mill, this did not leave a farthing of profit, and our only
chance of making any lay in the shares we still held in the new company.
The gold-mines of Victoria, both alluvial and quartz, are of great
extent, and some of them of extraordinary richness. The reefs as a rule
are larger, and carry their gold more regularly throughout than do the
reefs in Queensland. Many of them are worked on a gigantic scale,
and will pay a dividend with a yield of 4 dwt. to the ton. The chief
alluvial diggings is Ballarat, and Sandhurst is the head mining centre.
They are both distant about 100 miles from Melbourne, and connected
with it by rail. But the whole colony is full of both alluvial and
reefing districts, and while the old fields continue to develop, fresh
ones are still being discovered. The total yield of gold in 1883 was
808,521 oz., valued at £3,234,124, showing an increase of £133,036 over
the yield of 1878; but there is little doubt that if a healthier tone
of speculation pervaded the mining market of Victoria, her gold-fields
would be developed very much more quickly. The gold-mines of Victoria,
however, are an important factor in the money market of the world; and
since the discovery of gold in 1851, to the end of the year 1882, the
quantity of gold raised amounted to £205,600,216.
The population of Victoria in the last five years has increased over
100,000. The following are the figures:--
POPULATION.
December 1878 827,439
” 1883 931,800
-------
Increase 104,361
=======
The revenue has increased even faster than the population, for whereas
the increase of the latter was only 12½ per cent in five years, that
of the former was as much as 24½ per cent in a similar period. This
is readily accounted for by two causes, the high protection tariff of
the colony and the extortionate taxation of land recently introduced
by the Government, which, of course, for a time increases the revenue,
but cannot fail in the end to injure the prosperity of the colony by
deterring immigration and bringing the transfer of land to a dead lock.
REVENUE.
1877-78 £4,504,413
1882-83 5,611,253
---------
Increase £1,106,840
=========
The imports in 1883 exceeded those in 1878 by over one and a half
millions sterling, and the exports in 1883 exceeded those in 1878 by
nearly that amount.
IMPORTS and EXPORTS.
Imports. Exports.
1878 £16,161,880 £14,925,707
1883 17,713,484 16,394,936
---------- ----------
Increase £1,551,604 £1,469,229
========== ==========
RAILWAYS.
Year. Miles open. Receipts.
1878 1,052 £1,391,701
1883 1,562 1,898,311
------ ----------
Increase 510 £506,610
====== ==========
AGRICULTURE.
Acres Wheat.
Year. under cultivation. Acres under crop. Bushels raised.
1879 1,688,275 707,188 9,398,858
1883 2,208,652 1,099,944 15,499,143
--------- --------- ----------
Increase 520,377 392,756 6,100,285
========= ========= ==========
It will be seen that the average yield of wheat per cent is very low,
being under 2½ quarters to the acre.
In 1880 3,580,000 bushels of wheat were exported, and in 1884 it is
calculated that the amount will rise to 9,000,000 bushels.
WOOL PRODUCED (excess of Exports over Imports).
Quantity. Value.
Year. Lbs. £
1878 52,639,293 3,447,451
1883 64,095,489 5,178,081
---------- ---------
Increase 11,456,196 1,730,630
========== =========
LIVE STOCK.
Year. Horses. Cattle. Sheep.
1878 203,150 1,169,576 10,117,867
1883 280,874 1,287,088 10,174,246
------- --------- ----------
Increase 77,724 117,512 56,379
======= ========= ==========
The fact that whereas the number of sheep in five years has only
increased 56,379, the amount of wool produced during the same period
has increased 11,456,196 lbs. at first sight seems rather curious. It
is accounted for by three causes. In the first place, in the last few
years a great many people have given up washing their wool. In the
second place, whereas at the end of 1878 the sheep in Victoria were
almost entirely merinos, there are now a great number of cross-breds,
which, of course, carry greater weight of wool per sheep. In the
third place, and this is the most important cause of all three, the
wool-growers of Victoria, by improving the breed of their sheep, have
during the last few years, in many instances, increased the wool
produced by their flocks considerably over one pound per head.
The increase indicated above in cattle and sheep in the colony is
ridiculously small. But during the next few years it is pretty certain
that the returns will show a considerable decrease. A stock tax was
passed a year or two ago of 5s. per head on all cattle, and 1s. per
head on all sheep in Victoria. The public revenue derives little
benefit from it, for it costs as much to collect as it is worth; but
it is a ruinous imposition on the growers of stock, and is driving
sheep and cattle out of the colony in great numbers. Quite recently
over 200,000 fat sheep have passed from Victoria into New South Wales,
where, of course, they will be slaughtered, and their fleeces go to
swell the returns of that colony.
The existence of immense freeholds in Victoria has aroused the
fiercest class-hatreds in that democratic community, and has provoked
legislation which can only be described as free plunder. It is not long
since _The Times_ drew the attention of England to the astonishing
fact that one tenth of the revenue from taxation is paid by a few
individuals.
Now, as the population of a country increases, the continued existence
of large tracts of land, whether freehold or leasehold, held for
pastoral purposes, is to a certain extent a barrier to the advance of
civilisation. But we must remember that, had these lands never been
taken up and improved by their owners and holders, civilisation could
never have advanced at all.
Throughout the whole of Australia rages an internecine war between
the two great rival classes competing for the possession of the land,
the squatters and the selectors. The squatter is the pioneer of
civilisation. His profits are often great, but they are no greater than
his risks deserve, and it is his capital and enterprise alone that open
up the country. At his heels follow the selectors, an impecunious tribe
of jackals armed with manhood suffrage, who rob him of his hard-earned
gains.
Now it would be utterly unreasonable that the squatter should expect to
remain unmolested in possession of vast tracts of country, requiring
a very few hands to work. When the proper time comes, he must give
way to the advancing tide of population, and move on farther away from
civilisation. But when we consider that at great risk to himself he
has made life possible in a country where it was impossible before, it
is evident that every consideration is due to the squatter, and, at
anyrate, that he is entitled to some compensation for being forcibly
ejected. Had it not been for the squatter’s water-tanks, some of the
railways in Victoria and New South Wales could never have been made,
and, as has been already said, it is his capital and enterprise alone
that have developed the country.
But in Victoria the possession of a large estate is considered as
a crime, and the holder a fair mark for reprisals. The recent land
legislation in the colony is perfectly indefensible.
A few years ago a land-tax was passed, which, until it was surpassed
by a still worse measure, stood alone for a piece of villainous
legislation. It was directed entirely against one class, the holders
of large freeholds, for all town-lands and anything under the value of
£2500 were exempt. The value of the whole tax is about £200,000, and it
is paid by a little over 800 individuals.
If anything could be worse than the Land Bill itself, it is the way
in which the provisions of it are carried out. The assessment of the
land was entrusted to the hands of publicans, newspaper editors, and
schoolmasters; and the way in which it has been carried out is a
perfect scandal. I have seen a large open plain, divided merely by a
wire fence, the land on one side of which was taxed at threepence per
acre, and on the other side at a shilling. Extensive bribery prevails,
of course, the assessors being generally amenable to the influence of
a ten-pound note; but where this inducement is not forthcoming, the
assessment is regulated by purely political considerations.
A friend of mine, a Conservative, pays the same rent for 7000 acres
of land as his next neighbour, a Radical, pays for 17,000 acres of
exactly the same class of country. The classification of the land is
itself a most phenomenal piece of absurdity, involving not only rotten
legislation but false arithmetic. The land is assessed as follows:--
1st class 1s. per acre.
2d ” 9d. ”
3d ” 6d. ”
4th ” 3d. ”
Thus the rise in the tax from the fourth to the third class is 50 per
cent, from the third to the second class is 33⅓ per cent, and from the
second to the first is only 25 per cent.
As a matter of course the value of land all over the colony went
down 30 per cent; but the land-tax has been entirely eclipsed by the
infamous Bill that has just now been passed. The original leases of the
squatters having all of them expired some years ago, they have been
holding their runs under yearly lease from the Crown. The Government
have now resumed all lands so held without option of purchase, and
without any compensation for improvements of any kind, and are going to
put them up to auction with all improvements standing on them. It is
impossible to imagine more wholesale and unjustifiable robbery, and the
effect to many of the squatters will be disastrous.
There is no doubt that the high protection tariff of Victoria and
recent land legislation are doing a great deal to retard the progress
of the colony, and to darken her future prospects. Though the tables of
statistics above show fairly satisfactory progress, we must remember
that they were taken just after a run of five remarkably good seasons,
and before the evil effects of the Land Acts were beginning to be
severely felt.
In the next decade the progress of Victoria will not be anything like
so rapid, and, as it is, she has chiefly her enormous yield of gold to
thank for the position she holds. That position she is doing her best
to forfeit, and she will very soon be eclipsed by the sister colonies
of Queensland and New South Wales. It has been calculated that over
15,000,000 of capital have been driven from Victoria into Queensland
and New South Wales during the last three years.
In Victoria there is manhood suffrage, and the members of the Lower
House of Parliament receive a salary of £300. The Upper House has
recently been Liberalised to a very considerable extent by reducing
the qualifications both of its members and of those by whom they are
elected. While this has had the effect, if indeed that were possible,
of lowering the tone of the Upper House, it has materially strengthened
its position. To any attempt to raise an outcry against the Upper House
as being representatives of merely a class, the answer is obvious that
the Upper House now represents the people, and is elected by them just
as much as the Lower House. The language used in the latter assembly is
disgraceful; some of its members are not unfrequently intoxicated, and
occasionally there is a fight on the floor.
In Victoria, as in New South Wales and in Queensland, Members of
Parliament are principally collected from the scum of the community,
and politics are looked down on as being unfit either for the
occupation of a gentleman or the profession of an honest man.
It is pleasant to turn from the spectacle of a mob of selfish ruffians
struggling to fill their own pockets by ruining a colony, to the
society of Melbourne, which is one of the cheeriest and pleasantest in
the world.