Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 423, January 1851

The bullionists, struck with terror at so prodigious an addition annually to their darling gold, and consequent diminution in its exchangeable value, are beginning to exert themselves to decry it. They say that there is a " Currency Restriction Act of Nature ;" that the supply of gold from the alluvial washings will soon be exhausted; and that when the excavation comes to be made from the rocks and mountains in which the veins are embedded, it will cease to be profitable, from the hardness of the strata of rock in which the veins are found. 4 4 Quarterly Review , October 1850. The plea in abatement of the supply of gold thus likely to be obtained is very remarkable. The fact of its appearing in the highly respectable journal where it first was ushered to the world, and from the pen of the eminent geologist from whom it is said to have proceeded, are alike ominous. It shows at once how marvellously strong has been the hold which the mania for raising the value of gold and cheapening that of everything else prevailing during the last thirty years, from the influence of the holders of realised wealth, has got of the most influential classes in this country; and how deep is their alarm at the prospect of all their measures being at once blown into the air by the augmented supply of this very gold from the shores of California! A "Currency Restriction Act of Nature!" What a commentary on the measures of Sir R. Peel, so vehemently lauded and strenuously supported by all the capitalists whose fortunes, from the Currency Restriction Act of the right hon. baronet, were every day increasing in value! They would fain enlist Nature in the same crusade against labour and in favour of riches; but they may save themselves the trouble. There is no Currency Restriction Act of Nature: her beneficence, unlike that of man, is equally distributed over all her children. The Currency Extension Act of Nature will only stand forth in brighter relief from having been immediately preceded by the Currency Restriction Act of Man.

To show how chimerical are the hopes of a Currency Restriction Act of Nature, which is to limit and interrupt the blessings with which an increased supply of the precious metals for the general service of the world cannot fail to be attended, it is sufficient to observe that the auriferous region where the gold is found in alluvial deposit, is said to be a tract of country between three and four hundred miles long and from thirty to forty miles broad. It is therefore as long as from London to Berwick, and as broad as the average breadth of the plains of Yorkshire. What is the scraping or excavations of sixty or eighty thousand men on so immense a surface? Conceive every one of these persons daily digging his own grave in this auriferous region: how long will it take them to go over the whole surface and exhaust its treasures? Only apply to it the test of the rudest calculation. A square mile contains above 3,000,000 square yards. Supposing each digging occupies two square yards, there will be 1,500,000 diggings in a square mile; and if each person excavates a digging a-day, which is probably as much as can be calculated upon at an average, as the operation is so much impeded by water, 100,000 persons will take fifteen days to turn up and exhaust one square mile. In the gold region, however, there are at least 9000 square miles. Supposing that the 100,000 persons work 300 days in the year, which is more than can be calculated upon, they will only turn over and thoroughly search twenty square miles in a year. At this rate, it would take above four hundred years for even that large army of labourers to exhaust the alluvial gold region. We are aware the diggings do not go on regularly as is now supposed; that one man tries his fortune here, and another there; and that the earth is perforated at the same time in a great variety of places, many of them at a considerable distance from each other. We know, too, that the real extent of the gold region is hitherto the object of speculation and hope, rather than actual survey or knowledge. It is quite probable, too, that our calculation, which is a mere rough guess, may be above the mark in some particulars, and below it in others. Still, enough, making allowance for all such errors, remains to show that, in the alluvial gold region alone, if the accounts of its extent and riches are at all to be relied on, there is ample room for a vast annual addition to the treasures of the earth for a great many generations to come. The circumstance which makes it all but certain that the gold region must be very extensive, is its being found in the alluvial deposits of the mountain rivers, such as the Sacramento, along their whole course. If you find granite or mica slate particles in the beds of rivers and the level fields they overflow near the sea, you are sure of finding the same deposits up to the mountain regions from which they are brought down.

But what is the alluvial gold region to the mountain region from which the precious metals with which it abounds have been torn down by the storms and wintry torrents of thousands of years! If you find a detritus of a certain description in the mixed sand and gravel of a plain, you may predicate with perfect certainty the existence of mountains and rocks of the same formation in the higher regions from which it has been brought down. Granite or mica-slate debris in the beds of rivers or the level fields which they occasionally overflow, imply granite or mica-slate in the hilly region from which they take their rise. Whence has all the gold come which in the alluvial plains of California is producing such treasures, and changing prices over the whole world? It has come down from the mountains. And what must be the metallic riches with which they are charged, when the washed-down gravel at their feet is so prolific of mineral wealth! The bullionists, influenced by dread of a general rise of prices, and depreciation of the exchangeable value of their realised fortunes from this rise, say there is a "Currency Restriction Act of Nature;" that gold at any depth is unworkable at a profit; that Providence is niggardly of its bounty; and they in secret indulge the hope that it will continue permanently that contraction of the currency which they have contrived to force upon mankind, and which, while it lasted, has proved so eminently profitable to themselves. But a little consideration must show that their hopes in this respect are entirely fallacious. Granting that the veins of gold, when they go deep, are embedded in very hard rock, what is to be said to the cropping out of the veins over the vast extent of the auriferous Rocky Mountains? If the wasting away of wintry storms on the tops and sides of these mountains brings down such quantities of gold with the streams which furrow their sides, must not the laborious hand of industry prove equally efficacious in removing it? If the expansive force of a rapid thaw, following severe frost, can rend the rocks in which the gold is embedded, is not the power of gunpowder or steam equally great? Already a company, composed of English capitalists, has been formed to explore the mountain treasures; and without supposing that they are to find an El Dorado in every hill, and admitting that there may be several failures before the right one is hit on, it is morally certain that in the end the mountain reserves of treasure must be discovered.

The additions to the currency of the earth, hitherto considered, have been those coming from these auriferous regions of North America, now for the first time brought into view only; but this is by no means the whole of the provision made by nature for the extended wants of mankind in this age of transition, vehement excitement, extended transactions, and rapidly-increasing numbers. The Ural and Altai Mountains have brought forth their treasures at the same time, and provided as amply for the wants of the Sclavonic race in the Old, as the Californian hills have done for the growth of the Anglo-Saxon in the New World. Gradually, for twenty years past, the Russian treasures have been brought to light; and their progressive increase has done more to alleviate the distress and sustain the industry of western Europe than all the wisdom of man in her aged monarchies has been to effect. Grievous as have been the calamities which the contraction of the currency of the world by the reduction of paper in Great Britain, simultaneously with the ruin of the South American mines by the revolutions of its vast regions, which we laboured so assiduously to promote, have produced, they would have been doubly severe if the Ural and Altai Mountains had not provided treasures at the very time when the other supplies were failing, which in part at least supplied their place. Their influence was long felt in Europe before their amount was suspected, and even now the wisdom or terrors of the Russian Government have prevented it from being accurately known; but it is generally understood to have now reached five or six millions sterling annually; and, like the Californian gold, it is susceptible of an indefinite increase, in the event of the influx of that metal from America not lowering its value so as to render it unworkable in Asia at a profit.