The value of gold was kept up in spite of the sudden increase in the supply, because, under Free Trade, the commerce of the country began to expand by leaps and bounds. The Australian supplies, in fact, were absorbed in trade, for it is obvious that the sudden expansion of business which followed from Free Trade must have caused a corresponding demand for money, not only to conduct the operations of barter, but to pay the wages of the additional workers who produced the articles sold for money. When this fact is grasped, it is easy to understand what the Australian gold discoveries did for England. Had no new supplies of gold been found in 1853, Free Trade would have brought serious disasters in its wake, but not precisely in the form predicted by the Tories. The sudden expansion of trade would have caused a sudden demand for gold; the value of gold must have risen. Supposing gold had thus doubled in value, then the prices of commodities would have been halved, that is to say, one hundred oxen would have sold only for as many sovereigns as fifty sold for before the value of gold was thus increased. Everybody who had to make a fixed money payment, such as rent or interest, would have had their payment doubled, for they would have had to produce twice as much to meet their obligations as originally sufficed for that purpose. The burden of the National Debt, for example, would have been doubled, for, to pay every pound’s worth of interest to the fundholder, the public would have had to realise what represented two pounds’ worth of wealth when the interest was first fixed. In fact, the only people who would have gained, would have been the few who had to receive fixed payments, at the expense of the many who had to make them. The discovery of gold at a time when a liberated and expanding trade was causing an increased demand for the metal was thus a providential coincidence. By preventing the demand from outrunning the supply, it prevented a sudden increase in the value of the metal, which must have reduced prices and upset all the monetary arrangements of the country.