troopers. But it is equally incumbent on the recorder to recognise the more agreeable fact that there were officers in both grades who did their harsh duties differently. Some of these are still in the service, and retain the respect they won in the more troublous times by their judicious and humane administration of an obnoxious law, for the existence of which they were in no way responsible.
In the matter of gold statistics there has been found great difficulty, for the early records were imperfect, and the latter ones are little, if in anywise, superior; while searches for the first newspaper accounts of the gold discovery have shown that, both in Melbourne and Geelong, the public files have been rifled of invaluable portions by the miserable meanness of some unknown thieves.
The future we have not essayed to divine. What the past and the present of our local history may do to enable the reader to speculate upon the future, each one must for himself determine, though the faith of the Ballarat of to-day in the Ballarat of the future may, we think, be more accurately inferred from the stable monuments of civic enterprise, and the many signs of mining, manufacturing, and rural industry around, than from the occasional forebodings of fear in seasons of depression. In less than two decades we have created a large city, built up great fortunes, laid the foundations of many commercial successes, and sown the seeds of yet undeveloped industries; and those who have seen so much should not readily think that we are near the exhaustion of our resources, either in the precious minerals, or the still more precious spirit of enterprise and industry necessary for the development of the wealth of nature around us. For the good done, and for the doers of the good, we may all be thankful, if not proud; and, in proportion as we are thus moved, we may look with confident hope towards the future, whose uncertain years are lit up with the radiance of the past, and shaped to our vision by the promise of the present.
Among modest writers it is the fashion not only to write prefaces, but to excite attention to wonderful merit by apologies for defects. The present writer burns to be in the fashion. He
