COMMENTS ON PASSING EVENTS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4299, 31 December 1874, Page 3

COMMENTS ON PASSING EVENTS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—A telegram tells «s that money has advanced in London to G per cent. This is no unusual event in November : but we get no cause. Indeed, the telegraphic information by cable is shamefully scanty. If we and Australasia cannot afford to subsidise both telegraph and steam mail, the preference should be given to the former, as it concerns the whole people, whilst the latter only a portion of them, more particularly the commercial class. If the telegraph was wisely subsidised, in a few years, very few, the cable telegrams might be reduced to one-fourth of present cost—each reduction of price, by increasing numbers of telegrams would lead to a further reduction down to a certain point. Apparently there is great derangement in North American commercial matters, attributed to the rebellion and its enormous cost. But lam inclined to believe there is another and much more important cause the great increase obtained by Morrell in the tariff during the rebellion, when the voice of the South was, powerless in Congress. It appears to have so diminished the increase of American capital that we witness the frightful suffer?. g of .the warking-elnas in -New York- and-elsewhere In the United States, though the influx of people from Europe does not appear to have been exceptionally large. The state of North America reminds me of the depressed condition of England prior to Cobden’s victory of Free Trade ; but there may be other causes, and therefore I desire more American information. I cannot but believe money must be cheap—for the annual increase of capital in England must now be something like £300,000,000, and the foreign loans are trifling ; whilst there are no great discoveries demanding, as the railroads did, large masses of capital. The demand now is for almost stationary progress. Indeed. we have worked np the inventions of the eighteenth century, and this has produced none—it does not appear to be an inventive period, strange as that will appear to many. X consider the strike which has been growing during last sixty if not seventy years the great event of the century. Its principle is that God helps those who aid themselves ; it shows heroic powers of endurance and suffering, great sources of congratulation to the man who believes in England, and that she should continue in a foremost position in the good of the world. Think of the begrimed masses coming out of the earth, and conquering masses of concentrated capital—certainly here is power, and it is well for England it is so.—l am, &c., Samuel Revazs. , Woodside, Dec. 16,1874,