THE FOREIGN LOAN QUESTION. [From the Morning Chronicle, January 21.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 517, 17 July 1850, Page 4

THE FOREIGN LOAN QUESTION. [From the Morning Chronicle, January 21.]

It is a great comfort to quiet people like ourselves to think that the Peace party cannot do quite what they please with public opinion. Once and away, such demonstrations as that of last Friday do no very great harm — except to the tempers and reputations of those concerned in them. But only fancy this sort of thing becoming- a favourite and habitual recreation with Englishmen ! Fancy crowded public meetings held in every town in Great Britain for the purpose of denouncing individual capitalists as " the authors and abettors of crime" — bellowing forth "yelte and execrations" against particular journals as " vampires, ghoules, and monsters" — branding foreign Potentates with " bloody brutality" — and darkly hinting at the sudden deaths of Emperors as a probable and not altogether undesirable contingency ! The consequences would, we apprehend, be decidedly serious. We have not Mr. Cobden's taste for drawing horrid pictures in the " volcanic" style, and therefore we leave a good deal to the reader's imagination. It is enough to say, that in the case supposed we should soon see a state of society in which it would be requi.

site to pay pretty smartly for, the security of person and property against mob outrage, and that the commonest prudence would suggest putting the " national defences" on a safe war footing. There is not an instance in history of one country bating another as Mr. Cobden and his Peace friends would have Englishmen bate the Emperor of Russia without (sooner or later) picking a quarrel and getting up a war. Happily, however, this frenzy of the Apostles is not very catching with the prudent, steady-going, business-like British public ; and we can afford, therefore, to criticise Mr. Cobden's argument, such as it is, as coolly as we should any performance more directly intended to minister to the public amusement. The fact that Russia has actually got the money, somewhat diminishes, indeed, the practical interest of the discussion ; but we may still usefully consider how far the late proceeding has tended to throw any new light either on the economical or on the moral principles applicable to this class of monetary transactions. Of course we have not the least difficulty in admitting, at the outset, that there is considerable force in some of Mr. Cobden's remarks on the general insecurity of loans to foreign powers : and this class of investments is certainly not one that we should recommend to the small capitalist, who would be ruined by the miscarriage of a single venture. After the cruel losses which Englishmen have sustained in their transactions even with,regenerated and liberalised monarchies and model republics, it seems impossible to be too cautious before tempting fortune further in the same line ; and we know far too little of the financial resources and internal economy of the Russian empire to be justified in reposing implicit faith in any monetary guarantees which that Power can offer. At the same time we are not aware that Mr. Cobden has discovered anything really new on this head. Strike out the balderdash of his speech, and it simply comes to this — that a loan to Russia j is perhaps not a much safer speculation than I a purchase of shares in an average railway, and that it is not anything like so safe as having your money in Consols. But then nobody imagines that it is. The inferiority of the security is confessed, admitted, and allowed for, in the offer of a superior rate of interest. The only question (commercially speaking) is, whether the difference between three per cent, and five fairly represents the-diffe-rence between British and Russian solvency and good faith. It is needless to say that the public would be very much indebted to Mr. Cobden or any other man who could answer this question in a rational and business-like way. But Mr. Cobden does no such thing. When he comes to this point he flies off into invective, assertion, and declamation. He tells us, in a rage, that the whole Russian empire is an " imposture," and that he would not give £25 for what the Stock Exchange daily appraises at considerably upwards of £100. His only reasons for this eccentric estimate are, that the institutions of the Russian empire are very much the reverse of "liberal," tbat the Emperor is not (in his judgment) likely to live ioug, and that some day or other the whole of the vast region over which that Potentate rules is certain to be " one scene of violence and destruction." In other words, English property in Russia has next to no value, because Russia is peculiarly liable to sudden anarchy. Well ! be it so, for the sake of argument — though it does seem odd to say, so very positively, that the Russian throne is surrounded by more " combustible materials" than any other throne in Europe, when it, happens to be one of the very few that have not even been singed in a general conflagration. But is it not obvious that this inherent fundamental rottenness of the Russian state is as good a reason against any commercial transactions with that country (except for cash payments) as against a loan to the Emperor? Consignments of goods to a " volcano" seem scarcely less ha- | zardous than deposits of cash in the same locality ; and if we are to " rise some morning and find tbat vast empire torn asunder," it is surely high time to pull in, and close all our accounts with so shaky an establishment. It is superfluous to point out, that if we once begin conducting business on this extraordinarily cautious principle, many other descriptions of commercial investment must likewise be relinquished as over-hazardous. Are the institutions of Brazil, Cuba, and the Slave States of the Union quite what one could wish in point of solidity ? Is it entirely prudent to have vast amounts of . outstanding debts due to us from countries Whose social state includes so " volcanic" an element as negro slavery ? And so one might go on — eliminating from our foreign trade one ingredient of " insecurity" after another, until we had got rid of insecurity and trade together. And, as the commercial argument against loans to despotic Governments and " combustible" countries is equally good against giving

commercial credit to such countries, so likewise is the moral one. .Nothing can be plainer, one would think, than that if it is a crime to lend money to the Russian Government, it is also a crime to augment the despot's revenues by adding to the wealth, and consequently to the taxable resources of his " slaves.' ' And by parity of reasoning (for Mr. Cobden jwill hardly say that Hungarian wars are more wicked than the slave trade) the importers i»nd consumers of Brazilian and Cuban sugar jare the " authors and abettors of all the crimes and cruelties" which the profit derived by the Trans-Atlantic parties to the transaction induces and enables them to perpetrate. It so happens, by the way, that some gentlemen who took part in Friday's proceedings are, as is well known, quite prepared to admit this analogy. It did not suit Mr. Cobden's immediate purpose to denounce Manchester cotton spinners and other traders with Brazil as making an " unholy and infamous" profit out of slavery, and growing rich on negro "blood-money" — but Mr. Joseph Sturge and a good many more would have cheered him prodigiously if he had. Thus Mr. Cobden's argument, in both its branches, is open to the fatal objection that it proves too much. Follow it far enough, and it lands you in an awful reductio ad nbsurdum. It might seem uncharitable were we to add that we believe that Mr. Cobden's moral bor- j ror of " war loans," as such, to be affected and insincere. But we will plainly tell him that there is only one way in which he can entirely satisfy quiet observers of men and things, that this crotchet of his is a piece of honest fanaticism. Let us see him abuse the Americans and their loan as furiously as he has done the Emperor of Russia — let him denounce the sin of trafficking in Mexican '* blood-money," as fiercely as he has inveighed against the English authors and abettors of Hungarian " massacre" — and we will at once acknowledge that it is a real mania with him, and not a sham one. The morale !of the two cases is identical ; and if the supposed solvency and longevity of American institutions make any difference in his treatment of them, it will be clear that his "moral" objections to a profitable venture of " bloodmoney" are not insurmountable. We have no wish to pursue this disagreeable subject further ; but we cannot finally quit it without recommending Mr. Cobden — if he wishes to regain any portion of the confidence which the commercial and trading classes of this country once reposed in him — to lay aside that dictatorial and bullying tone which has latterly been growing upon him, to break himself of the habit of always imputing the worst motives to those who oppose and criticise him, and, above all, not hoist the Red flag. A politician who exultingly stakes all he is woith in reputation on the speedy break-up of empires, the sudden deaths of monarchs, the repudiation of public debts, and wholesale ' " violence and destruction," is in imminent danger of finally parting company with all the public opinion of England, except that which loves to express itself in " yells and execrations."