[From the Supplement to the Australian, Feb. 18.] GENERAL SUMMARY. " Monthly Times" office, Oct. 25, 1847.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 273, 11 March 1848, Page 3

[From the Supplement to the Australian, Feb. 18.] GENERAL SUMMARY. " Monthly Times" office, Oct. 25, 1847.

We expressed an apprehension in our last, that we had not fathomed the lowest depths of commercial disaster. It was impossible that so much direful calamity should not bring j other misfortunes in its train. The auticipation has been most painfully verified. Many more houses of long standing, and of high commercial repute, have bent to the blast ; and every day continues to announce some fresh wreck of hopes and fortunes. It is with no agreeable emotions that we give insertion in this place to details which can only interest in proportion as they may painfully affect the reader, but their intrinsic importance, and the anxiety that must prevail to be possessed ot them, is an unanswerable excuse for the prominence we give them. For the alleged causes of the additional disasters, and the order of their occurrence, we refer to our commercial summary. The following are the leading failures of die fortnight, ending Oct. 25 :— The Royal Bank of Liverpool. Messrs. Barclay, Brothers, and Co. Messrs. Rickardd, Little, and Co., East India trade. Messrs. Lawrence, Philips, and Co., ditto. The Abingdon and' Wantage Bank. Messrs. Molyneux and Ilubbert, tea-brokers. Mr. William Pearse, East India trade. Mr. Hadley, stock-broker. Mr. Oakley, ditto. Messrs. Berrey, Young, and Co., Liverpool, merchants. Messrs. Livingston and Co., ditto, (resumed). Messrs. Scholes and Co., Manchester, bankers. Messrs.- Brown and Todd, Liverpool merchants. Messrs W. Steele and Co., Liverpool, manufacturers. The Newcastle Union Joint Stock Bank. Mr. Claggett, tobacco merchant. Mr. William Nash, Manchester Messrs. Peter Cornthwaite and Co., wholesale tea-dealers. Messrs. Mocatta and Son, of Liverpool, a firm in the La Guayra trade. Messrs. Southam. of Ashton-under-Lyne, cot-ton-spinners. Messrs. E. and J. Andrews, Manchester, calico printers. Messrs. W. Jones and Co., Liverpool, whole - | sale tea-dealers. Mr. James Logan. Messrs. Barton, Irlam, and Higginson, West India merchants, of South John-street, Liverpool. Messrs. Brook and Wilson ; on Saturday. Messrs. Lackerstein, of Liverpool, and Messrs. Scott, Bell, and Co., with whom is much sympathy. We hear they received no less a sum than £35,000 bad bills by the last ! mail. The creditors of Cockerell and Co., have resolved that the affairs of the house shall be wound up under inspection, and Mr. W. Martin, formerly of the Calcutta house, proceeds to India by the present mail Co protect the interests of the creditors generally. The revenue returns for the quarter have been published, and exhibit a serious defalcation in the Customs, Excise, and Stamps. The decrease in the former is £374,191 ; in the second it is £641,986; and on the Stamps, £66,419. The balance of the year shows an increase of £31 1,764 but it is reasonably apprehended that the next quarter's results will exhibit another decline. The China tribute, of course, and its effect is swelling the last year's receipts above what might have been looked for from extraneous sources in the present year, but if there had been any soundness I in the theories of the Free Traders under whose domination Sir Robert Peel acted, there ought to have been a corresponding increase this year arising from permanent sources of income. The ultra-Free Trade champions console themselves for present appearances by ingeniously asking what would have been the state of the country if Protection had not been abolished ? - Ireland is tranquil — comparatively speak- . ing. A positive absence of murder, disturbance, and discoutent,,appears an impossibility.

As winter approaches, the cry for aid frorA England is renewed, and the first answer has been Returned in the shape of a church colleo tion made in the Queen's name on the Thanks-giving-day. Against this collection the voices of many influential parties, including, some of the clergy and the Times newspaper, were raised some days before the appointed day, the clergy arguing that their own parishouers stood in need of all the assistance that could he spared ; and Mr. T. Campbell Foster (th« " Commissioner" aforesaid) insisted that Ireland would never work as long as she could live by charity-. " What surely here is wanted," quoth he " but enterprise and industry among the people to win the wtalth which so temptingly invites them to labour ? Yet, what must we propose to deaden their impulses to either, but to support them on charity I Oh ! let every man who loves Ireland sternly refuse to advance to her one penny, and compel her, in spite of herself, to do more tha!n * labour a very little' to convert into many sources of wealth her almost boundless natural advantages $ and let every soft-hearted Englishman, impelled by his humanity to contribute a sovereign for the relief of ' the starving Irish,' feel assured of this, that he has contriLuted towards the removal of that necessity which will alone impel the Irish of the western coast to work, and in so doing has helped to perpetuate their poverty and wretchedness and their degrading 1 content.' " In spite of this remonstrance* the charitable contributions were considerable. The position of affairs in Switzer'and excites the most lively interest in England, less 1 on account of the sympathy entertained for the cause of one party more than another, than because it is apprehended that the liberty enjoyed by the Cantons may ultimately be impaired by the intervention .of other European powers. By the latest accounts, the contending parties were armed, and in a position to commence. A civil war can scarcely, it is feared, be averted. We thought it would not be long before we should have to report some further changes in Spain. Narvaez, with the help of French gold and the machinations of Queen Christina, rapidly bowled out -Senor Salamanca and his colleagues, and has since been comfortably in* stalled as Prime Minister. General Serrano, the Queeu's favourite, did not require much persuasion to leave Madrid with a well-filled purse and a commission as Captain-General of Grenada. This paved the way for further operations, and accordingly Queen Christina soon reappeared upon the scene of her manifold intrigues, and a reconciliation has been effected between Isabella and her unlucky husband. So, for the moment, the politics of Louis Philippe are in the ascendant, -and the barometer of Mr. Bulwer, albeit the young Queen danced with and smiled upon him, points to "cloudy."