The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1873.

Evening Star, Issue 3324, 15 October 1873, Page 2

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1873.

During this year, which to the Colony has proved so prosperous, events have been occurring in Europe which, in their immediate results, have been productive of very widespread ruin and distress. These misfortunes have been felt mainly in Austria, They have not been produced by any apparent physical causes ; they are not immediately traceable to war or political changes of a revolutionary character. They are the consequences of financial difficulties gradually spreading, and ultimately involving merchants, bankers, traders, lords, ladies, and people of every rank, in common bankruptcy. The accounts published in the columns of the London Times at various intervals describe the progress of the pressure, and graphically toll of the culmination, in which panic led to confusion, and confusion increased the panic. Asa matter of course, everybody in such cases has his own reason to give for the cause of the disease; but money fevers, unlike physical maladies, have not so many doctors ready to prescribe infallible cures. There is a mystery about monetary operations into which few persons have the patience or even opportunity to penetrate. Exchange, currency, and banking questions present very bard, dry, and uninviting aspects. There is nothing about them calculated to charm the imagination : they look too mathematically severe to induce investigation. Monetary diseases are slow in reaching their climax;

slower still in progressing towards recovery. In nature, cholera or epidemics may be resisted by individual constitutions; but in monetary epidemics, so mixed up are social interests that when they arise but few escape. The histories of many panics have been rec ircled : of the Tulip mania, the South Sea Bubble, the Mississipi scheme, and others. They were extraordinary manias which grew up from small beginnings, and increased in intensity through mere excitement ; but they are not parallels with the Vienna panic of 1873. The difficulty of investing surplus capital profitably, no doubt led to the initiation'of those giant bubbles which developed that gambling spirit which still prevails to so great an extent, and leads many to enter into engagements the obligations of which they never expect to be called upon to fulfil. Many of the schemes that found favor in Vienna this year were plausible; many were really good, but many others were never intended for any other purpose than to swindle. The projectors created shares to sell : the buyers bought shares to sell : and the struggle has been who should be the party “ sold.” The Political Mate, a journal published during the early part of the last century, sums up tlio character of similar schemes hy saying they were “set on foot and promoted' by crafty knaves, thou pursued by multitudes of covetous fools, and at last appeared to be, iu effect, what their vulgar appellation denoted them to he —bubbles and cheats.” Very amusing schemes were announced in those days. Maitland, in his history of London, relates that one of the projects which received great encouragement was “ to make deal boards out of sawdust.” It is hardly conceivable that this could be swallowed even by the most capacious gullet; but, assuming it was written in jest, schemes equally absurd found support. The Duke of Bridgewater and the Marquis of (Jiiandos had each a scheme for improving London and Westminister: “a wheel for perpetual motion ” was announced by a company with a capital of a million; another “for encouraging the breed of horses in England, and the improving of globe and Church lands, and repairing and re-building parsonage and vicarage houses,” was rapidly subscribed for; while to crown the list of absurdities, an unknown adventurer —but for the result one might have hoped some well-meaning moralist, anxious to bring people to their senses by a well-timed joke—put forth a project of “ A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.” The capital was to be half a million, in 5,000 shares of XIOO each, deposit X '2 per share. The office for this promising scheme was in Cornhill. The following morning by nine o’clock crowds beset the door, and when he closed at three, a thousand shares had been subsciibed for; the man pocketed X 2,000 and, as we say in these modern days, “ levanted.” Satirists pointed out the danger, but uselessly. Swiet, comparing Change Alley to a gulf in the South Sea, wrote :

Subscribers here by thousands float, Ami jostle one another down, Each paddling in Ids leaky boat, And here they tish for gold and drown. Now buried in the depths below, Now mounted up to heaven again, They reel and stagger to and fro, At their wit’s end, like drunken men. Meantime, secure on Carraway Cliffs, A savage race, by shipwrecks fed, Lie waiting for the foundered skiffs, And strip the bodies of the dead. The worst of a state of commercial feeling such as leads to such extravagance is the tendency to treat all projects as pure speculations. Those which are really legitimate enterprises are liable to be dragged into the whirlpool with mere bubble schemes. Tliis is almost the inevitable result, and can only bo guarded against by individual prudence. The measure of tliis prudence is not difficult for each man to establish for himself, and to guard against the eltects of improvidence in others it is better that he should act rather within its limits than exceed them. One cause of panics is that capital, through overdone enterprise, has been withdrawn from everyday reproductive industry, and invested in that which, from the nature of things, can yield no return for a great length of time. The prudent test is, can it be spared from business ? If it were merely the surplus that was invested—that amount which is over and above what is absolutely rerpiired for business —no injury would accrue ; but that is seldom the case. When men buy shares on speculation, and calls begin to bo made before they have sold them, many find it difficult to meet them as well as their legitimate engagements, and Avhen once the pinch begins panic sets in, and no one can say where it will end. It begun in Vienna, has extended to Wall street, New York , how it will affect London, and ultimately the Colonies, we cannot say. Verb a m sap.