Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/151

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PRESENT DEPRESSED STATE

Remarks on the French Vineyards—Expenses attending them—Calculation of the profit derivable from Vineyards in New South Wales—Remarks on planting and cultivating the Vine.


The total annihilation of all confidence, and the depressed state of the money market, or, to use the favourite colonial term, "the monetary confusion," now prevalent in the colony of New South Wales, have continued for such a considerable time, and have afforded as yet, so little prospect of ultimate amendment, that serious apprehensions have been entertained, that the colony will never recover from the blow her former prosperity has received. Property of all descriptions is quite unsaleable, and not a day passes without several new declarations of insolvency.

The causes of the lamentable confusion in which the affairs of the whole trading community of New South Wales have been so long involved, have been discussed usque ad nauseam, both in and out of the colony. Many writers in the Sydney newspapers, reviews, &c. have however displayed considerable cleverness in analysing and explaining, what they considered to be the origin of the present disorganised state of affairs in New South Wales. Although they differ with each other in some respects in the conclusions they have individually arrived at, yet I think most persons will allow that the following causes have been very instrumental in bringing about the present disastrous state of things.

The speculative mania which pervaded all classes