Stignation in England

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 88, 23 January 1892, Page 2

Stignation in England

A London telegram to the New York Herald dated November 28 says : — " It cannot be denied that business is in a very bad state here, and there is no prospect of its getting better. Imports and exports alike are falling off. The great staple industries of the country are suffering severely, and enterprise seems to be dead. Even the book-publishing season is uncommonly dull for this time of the year. Nobody has any money to spend, now that the Americans have gone home. Consols are only a trifle above 95, and all Mr Goschen's devices cannot push them higher. Lord Salisbury and the President of the Board of Trade have plainly warned the nation during the past week that the commercial future is to be regarded with much anxiety. No wonder, then, that people fly from the Stock Exchange, and that no more new companies are being brought out. What is the reason for all this 1 The first adverse influence is the hostile tariffs, which are gradually drawing an iron line around English industries and preventing their development. The next is the Baring collapse, which undermined half the city, and left the other half afraid to call its soul its own. But there is always the Bank of England in the background, and it is a pity that it was ever induced to come into the foreground. Most people now see and admit that it would have been far better to let the Barings go than for the Bank of England to have departed from its old traditions and its safe line of business for the purpose of proping up a private firm which had been guilty of the grossest imprudence and folly."