West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20, 1806.

West Coast Times, Issue 232, 20 June 1866, Page 2

West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20, 1806.

It is long since we have had the opportunity of publishing a telegram more pregnant and suggestive, than the one that briefly epitomises tho intelligence brought from Europe by the Madras, which we reproduce this morning from the columns of the " Despatch " of last evening. Several days will probably elapse before wo are in a position to furnish extracts from our English files. The Madras appears to have arrived at King George's Sound in a very crippled condition, owing to severe weather encountered, which at one time threatened her with the most serious disaster. It was expected she would be detained for a day and a-hnlf ; and she has of course on board of her tho mails for all tho eolouies, with tho exception of South Australia. l(1orl (l or such items of intelligence as wo havo received, we are indebted to the branch Adelaide Mail Service. On the arrival of f\\o South Australia mail at Glenelg, the most important items of European intelligence brought by her were telegraphed to Melbourne, and on arrival of the steamship South Australian from Melbourne at the Bluff yesterday, the samejiteim were telegraphed to us by our correspondent.

Necessarily, under those circumstances, the contents of our message are brief and fragmentary. But how pregnant they are with most significant meaning ! How suggesiive arc the fragments of tho story they reveal! For months past it has been known that the elements of disruption and war have been seething in Europe, and that the occasion for their outbreak only was wniteel for, for a general convulsion. That occasion seems now to have come. According to the latest telegraphio advices — and they come down to the 12th of May — a war in Europe was imminent. It is curious to note how the telegrams of successive dates relate the story of the constant growth of the political crisis, and its approach day by day nearer and nearer to the grand climax. How strangely it represents to vs 1 the sustained excitation of public feeling at home ! It is said that the most sensitive barometer of tho war weather is tho money market, whose quotations of stocks aw invariably looked to with extreme anxiety. We have before us now the almost daily record. April 30, funds dull ; May 4, bauk discount, 7 por cent; May 7, panic in money market continues ; May 8, discount 8 per cent ; May 11, panic unparalleled in London and Paris ; two banks susjiended ; Mny 12, Bank Charter Act suspended; discount 12 per cent ! Additional items tell us of the suspension of specie payments in Austria and Italy, and of the withdrawal of largo deposits of gold from the Bank of England, for shipment to the continent. We- may venture to affirm that the condition of things indicated by this infallible test has never been paralleled in England since the more critical phases of the great Napoleonic wars. When Great Britain was gradually drifting into the last European war in which she was engaged, there was no semblance of 1 a panic in the money market, although stocks were, cf course, to a considerable extent affected by tho prospect of hostilities. The nation wont to war, 'and it did so willingly and hopefully, confident in its resources, and sustained by the consciousness of being enlisted in a just cause. There was then little apprehension that the result of the intervention of England and France in the Eastern question, would lead to any general European embroilment. Now, the prospects appear to bo more gloomy. North and South, East and West, Europe is summoning its armaments to the field, Germany and Italy, and tho Austrian provinces of Italy, threatening to be the scene of the first outbreak. How seriously the commercial situation has been effected by the

very menacing position of affairs may be gathered from the paralysis that has seized upon commercial undertakings of the most gigantic character. The great house of Peto, Brassey, aud Co., has succumbed, and it is scarcely possible to assign limits to .the extent of the consequences of the fuilure of a firm so largely engaged in railway contracts in almost every country, alike of the old and the new world. Ono only

feature, in this complicated state, of affliirs can bo regarded as satisfactory to the colonists. The war that is impending does not threaten to be a maritime war, and so long as its dimensions are limited to questions connected with the politics of central Europe it is unlikely that tho free commerce of tho seas will be seriously affected.