The contrast is very great between the orderly behavior at the gold fields in Australia, and of California. There are few fields, we are told, at which a miner might not have his wife and family; if he could provide accommodation for them, they would be as safe, and meet with just as much respect as if they lived in their own house in town. A clergyman, quitting the Turon settlement, publicly returns his “sincere thanks to the commissioners of the Turon, and to the mining population in general, for the many acts of kindness which he experienced during his short residence among them. He considers it his duty,” he says, “thus publicly to state, not only his own personal obligations, but also the pleasure which he felt in witnessing the general desire of all classes to promote the object of his mission, and to profit by his humble labors; and if,” he says, “he were to judge from their orderly conduct, and from the earnest attention and apparent devotion with which they all joined in the religious services of the Sabbath, he could not help forming a very favorable opinion of the miners. It cannot be denied that the great majority are sober, industrious, and well-disposed.” The weekly “Gold Circular,” at Sydney gets poetical on the subject:— “In our first shipment, we could count the value of the gold in pounds sterling by hundreds; in a few weeks it rose to thousands; in a few weeks more it became tens of thousands; and we are fast approaching a period when each ship will convey hundreds of thousands.” At the time when that was written—on December sixth—in the very few months since the digging was commenced, there had been shipped from Australia, gold to the value of three hundred and twenty-nine thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven pounds; and since that time the yield of gold has been increasing. At the same time, California continues unexhausted, and the field of gold in Russia has enlarged. It will be seen, therefore, that there is just reason for anticipating a change in the value of gold, which will begin to take place gradually at no distant time. The annual supply of gold promises now to be about eight times greater than it was at the commencement of the present century. The value of silver, with reference to corn, fell two-thirds in the sixteenth century, as that of gold is likely to fall in the nineteenth. The price of silver fell in consequence of the increased production from the great mines in America. A piece of gold is now assumed to be worth fifteen or sixteen like pieces of silver; during the Middle Ages it was worth only twelve such pieces. In Europe, under Charlemagne, ten pieces of silver were an equivalent; and, at one period in Rome, silver was but nine times less precious than gold: relative values, therefore, have varied, and they will vary again. Since they were last fixed by law, there have occurred no causes of disturbance. Now, however, a time of disturbance is again at hand.