INSOLVENT STATES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 129, 15 April 1862, Page 5

INSOLVENT STATES.

(From the Evening Mail, Deo 21th.) If the world goes on according to the present system, we shall soon barely have a respectable, steady going, nation left. The old art of making both ends meet is going clean out of fashion. We have had the age of gold, but it was a long time ago ; and we have had the age of iron, and also the age of bronza ; but the inetalic races would appear to have rim their coui-se ; for, non obstanate California and Australia! and the silver iniues of South America, we have lapsed into an a»e of deficits. All the nations are in' ;i state of bankruptcy. The oldest are as bad as the youngest. Putting John Bull out ofthe question, who sowed his wild oats half a century ago, and who has beeu moody over his mortgages ever since, there is a general race among the populations wliich shall ■ret furthest into debt. France has already made her, declaration of being forty millions behindhand, llussia has got into such a mess that she cannot quite sec, the figure which will put her balance even, and Italy is borrowing witli both hands. 'We do not doubt that there are a score or so of small Tedotcan Powers not quite visible to the naked eye negotiating painfully with the children of Israel. It is notorious that Greece is very bad, that Turkey bas very. swiftly outrun the constable, and that America is riotously and recklessly rushing into unnumbered obligations, and thinking it rather a fashionable thing to imitate the old families in their vices. At the tail of this discreditable nick comes Austria, like a gouty old reprobate grown hoary in the vicious courses for- which youth was perhaps an extenuation, although not an apology. Austria, with the hardihood of an experienced debtor, comet forward and tells the world curtly that she has. a deficit of 214 millions of florins, or rather more than two-thirds of-her estimated receipts. Is we understand the statement as it comes to us from Vienna, it is much as if Mr. Gladstone were to tell the gentle men of Capel-court and the Boyal Exchange that he had a deficit npon his year's account of fifty millions sterling. The Austrian figure is not quite so high; but neither is the Austrian estimate of revenue quite so great as ours ; but, reckoning by proportion, this is the state of the case. We wonder what would lappen in England if such a declaration as this were jbliged to be made. We have seen sometimes a defi;it of a couple of millions : and we have seen, also, iow uneasy such aniiscalculation makes steady people, md what a very unenviable position a Chancellor jf the Exchequer occupies under such circumstances. But imagine a fifty millions deficit in time of peace! Imagine, also, if you can, that there was no hope ol tilings becoming better : that credit was gone; that all tlie tax-paying possibilities of the Empire were being eaten up by great swarms of soldiery, devouring the substance oi the people: that the great, provinces of the realm were watching the opportunity to burst forth in rebellion; that a powerful enemy* was sleeping on its arms, impatient for the moment oi attack, and that the only money to be seen in the kingdom consisted of vile pieces of paper wliich no one would take who could avoid it, and which was utterly valueless three miles over the frontier. Ii Mr. Gladstone had to tell us a story like this, we should all go frantic. We should, perhaps, give up Messrs Slidell and Mason to be hanged, we. might put India up to auction, sell Ireland to some Power we had a spite against, mortgage Canada to the Hudson's Bay Company, make a price for Singapore to the Dutch,—do anything wild and inconceivable to mitigate the horrible sense of insolvency, and to enable us to look our fellow-men again in the face, with the pride of honest poverty. Even France, wliich has a deficit without any of the additional circumstances we have'imagined, or rather recounted, has been rendered so uneasy by it that she has made a show ol thorough reformation. It is only Austria and America, only the old reprobate and the young profligate,— who see mountains of debt rising up all around them, and credit fading away in the distance, yet follow on their courses without a blush or a pang. Even the prodigal who has been disappoinied in his hope to find his fatted calf among the British bankers, has had the grace to make a sort of pretence of a settlement. He has made a colorable call of a few millions of taxation to pay the divivends of his seven per cent, loan of hundreds of-millions. The security may not be worth the paper it is written upon, but the young -"■entleman has gone through the form. But the tyrannical old Empire has not had even the grace to do this. Austria stands with her debtors all about her, and says nothing and offers nothing. " Gentlemen, it is a swindle," said the candid mountebank, but he said nothing about restitution. " I am spending nearly double my nominal income, and no one will pay me what they owe me, so I can pay nobody," is the simple statement of Austria. There is some talk of selling the State lands as a momentary stopgap; but this is as temporary an expedient as was Charles Surface's sale ofthe foimidable likenesses of his maiden aunts. Moreover, Charles Surface intended at least a portion ofthe produce of his sale for a benevolent puipose. Anstria, in her impotent penury, only desires to carry on at her old rate of expenditure in order to dragoon Venice and to hector Hungary. i If the Emperor of Austria would sell Venetia and do 1 justice to Hungary, and rule as a constitutional monarch all the races and religions which make up ! his kingdom, he might be an honest solvent sovereign, ■ representing with his satellite German principalities •an immense power in Europe. He thinks it a finer .thing to be a penniless tyrant than a comfortable ■ King. He likes to govern by military force, he > prefers to fill his army by forced conscriptions, he is content to collect his taxes sby troops of soldiery. Instead of being a 1 Soveriegn popular at home and respected abroad, he - thinks it victory so to oppress his people that they ■ suffer in silence, and wait with equanimity for the 1 hour when all their substance shall be so wasted out lof them that nothing can be extracted for further 1 resistance to a foreign enemy. The Magyars, the '• Serbs, the Croats are all sunk into a state of passive 3 resistance. They do not rise in rebellion, but they 2 make themselves as unprofitable as they can as subt iects. In the operations of nature, wherever there is * even' an apparent evil, there is always an ? evident good. The rain whicli hastens decay also - quickens vegetation. But when tyranny overspreads > a land there is no recompensing good. The waste ! and decay occasioned by arming one portion of the population against the rest, and performing all the 1 civil duties of Government by force, is not compen- - sated by any increased vigor in the social system, or tby any fertility in the State revenue. The expense ■is greater and thereturns are less. The Quadrilateral is the dearest piece of territory in the world, and it costs ten times as much as to make Hungary ripe for rebellion, and to keep her so, as it would to make her contented and loyal. The Emperor of Austria seems to have arrived at such a depth of financial embarrassment that he is hopeless of remedy, and looks at the whole tangled mass with a stupid indifference. This cannot last. Poor Kings and poor Governments, with their nation behind them, have sometimes come out as most dangerous adversaries, and have held the world at bay; but a poor tyrant is a hollow thing. Will not Francis Joseph make his choice while yet he may ? His opportunity may not be long. ;