In no department of industry were the immediate profits of Australian gold more appreciable than in our transoceanic mercantile marine. During the fifties European emigrants crowded every ship. Seamen's wages leapt up by a bound to £4 a month.[6] Between 1851 and 1859 the annual rate of emigrants was a hundred thousand. The gold raised during this period in Victoria fell little short of eighty nine millions. Imports rose to thirty pounds per head of the Victoria population, exports rose to fifty-six pounds per head. Previously to 1851 New South Wales could not be said to possess a foreign trade. In less than thirty years, by 1878, this commerce was reckoned annually by thirteen millions of exports, fifteen millions of imports. In New South Wales, too, the gold excitement was followed immediately by prosperity in coal fields which yielded not less than a million sterling. These are the circumstances that, rather than any domestic speculations or industries, explain the growth of the London plutocracy which has been so prominent a feature of the era now under consideration. Under Queen Elizabeth and the Cecils, fortunes made by lucky ventures in American and Indian trade were conspicuous. Under the Georges, after the victories of our great Admirals Howe, Jervis, Anson, foreign wealth was poured into England continuously long before large revenues were realized by the development of our mineral wealth. It has been already said that during some time after the Queen's accession there prevailed general distress chequered by the influx of gold from Russia and by the beginnings of railway enterprise. From the earliest fifties a change for the better set in, with what results the income tax returns will show. The impost was extended to Ireland in 1855. In that year the assessed incomes were three hundred and eight millions. Ten years later the amount was three hundred and ninety-six millions. After another decade it was five hundred and seventy-one millions. In the financial year 1882-3 the figures were £612,836,058. CHAPTER III TRANSFORMATION BY STEAM All projects of increased speed in locomotion denounced when first proposed. Sir Henry Herbert, M.P., in seventeenth century, on journeys between Edinburgh and London in a fortnight. Parliament on railways. Lord Clanricarde, Colonel Sibthorp, etc. George Hudson, the railway King. Charles Guernsey, the original of Thackeray's 'de la Pluche.' Progress and sequel of the railway fever of 1846. The Queen's first railway journey. Hudson and his fall. Comparison between mines and railways as sources of national wealth. Mr W. H. Mallock's demonstration that the working classes of the United Kingdom have increased in wealth more noticeably even than the upper classes.