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Leader (1850-1860), 19th September 1857, Edition 2 of 2, Page 16, LONDON AIR AND WATER. jFour-and-twenty r...

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      The Romance Of C-Kedit. How St. Mir&S, -...

      Inwes Cameron made candid . M . Jules Mir ^ s spoke with great feeling , describing in all the pride of magnanimous confession the glories he was relinquishing : — " Industry has its honour and glory . To do great things in industry and finance is an object a 3 noble and also as attractive as the doing cf great things in letters , the arts , or in politics . " Iproudly avow that I have this ambition , as many of my fellow-citizens have , for it is not merely the means of acquiring fortune ; in our days it is one of the first aspirations of human society to create those beautiful

      "ways of communication which bring peoples together , and facilitate the exchange of ideas as of products ; to bring about the restoration and sanification of old cities , the building of new ones ; to develop the working of those vast basins of combustibles , the extent of which nature seems to have measured by the grandeur of their uses ; to found those establishments , manufacturing or metallurgic , which send to all points of the globe the products of our industry ; in fine , to give to states and governments that concours financier which supplies to them nerve in war as well as in peace , and -which raises the science of finance to tie height of a political

      . " Well , gentlemen , without wishing ; to exaggerate what vfe have done with you , we may yet say , with legitimate pride , that there are few of those beautiful works or of those great operations in-which we have not participated . " "What are then the causes , he asked , which have determined me to stop in this course , attended by so much success , with such flattering prospects ? Let the reader note how M . MibeS spices his confession with new advertisements of what his Company , may do hereafter . Now for his description of causes . ' There are no passages in the classic poets more powerful , and , what is more , there is a considerable degree of truth in it : —

      " Look and listen around you , whatever may be the centre , social or accidental , in which you may be placed : you will remark a movement of opinion against jwhat is called business , and against those who conduct it . At the theatre , in drawing-rooms , in books , in the J udicial . or sacred tribune , as well as in the legislative tribune , in cities , in country places , you will observe this constant fact , a certain irritation , and , by consequence , hostility , varied in its forms according to the men , the situation , and the places , an irritation which , in expressing itself , goes from raillery to abuse , from hesitating supposition to formal accusation , but of which the significant character is an almost unanimity . "

      " ... Since the early months of 1856 , there has been a decline in the value of ' valeurs mobilieres , ' to the extent of several milliards of the wealth of the country , producing the irritation I have described , the more from the unexpectedness of the cause , the country being otherwise iu a stato of industrial and commercial prosperity . " " What , then , " he asked again , " are the real causes of this decline ? '' Ah ! this ia

      coming to the point j but here the ro mancist suddenly deviates into a siding . " This is not the place , " he says , " to enter into the details of that grave question . The causes are complex , but I may indicate one which is dominant—it is—distrust . " This is indeed a revelation ! But what brought about the distrust ? " You know , " said M . Mires , with tender simplicity , " how delicate are questions of credit , " and then he defines credit . For M . Mib . es is as powerful aa Abthub W airbridge in definitions . " Credit is truly said to be faith . " Revelation the second ! But how was it that faith had thus been undermined P In explanation , M . Minis treats us to a bit of history .

      In the first place , Government had thought it necessary to take precautions for restraining the excess of speculation ; and as soon as it was supposed that Government distrusted the situation , the same Beatiment of anxiety necessarily penetrated the spirits of men , and the ascensional movement was arrested . " Then comes another astounding disclosure . " Distrust was also overexcited by the decline which injured the interest of those who held commercial securities . ' * But M . Mm £ s has discovered a much more historical cause for the difficulty . " Bad crops and inundations inflicted on agriculture an im potence to satisfy the demands created by

      the very increase of the general well-being ;" and from that moment arose a deplorable antagonism between the territorial proprietaries and what M . Mihes calls " the richesse mobiliere , " a phrase which we scarcely know how to translate . It means the interest represented by personal property , or movable property ; let us borrow the phrase at once , and call the whole class especially meant , mobiliary property . He means apparently to indicate the high stock-jobbing interest , the wealthier portion , of the share-broking

      interest . " Hostility was especially turned upon railway property ; mobiliary property was looked upon as favoured at the expense of agriculture . " "The subvention granted to railway companies , and the guarantees of interest accorded to all shareholders , were remembered . " " [ Railways were reproached with the monopoly which had not been conceded to them . " " The service rendered by this beautiful work was denied ; its

      influence on the increase of public wealth was misunderstood . No credit -was given it for carrying despatches gratuitously , or for the enormous reduction , of cost in the carriage of grain . " Thus M . Mires shadowed the causes of a situation . " unexampled in history , since it is in the bosom of a profound peace and of a magnificent financial situation , that a general weakening of industry has occurred . "

      But there was a third cause ; and here came out a reminiscence of Akexandre Dumas the younger's Question & Argent : — ' " If , on the contrary , nothing stops the course of the system of defamation and outrages directed against men who have Tendered , we do not hesitate to say , veritable services to their country , and who have , hy their laborious efforts , contributed , to raise the public credit to a higfc dogreo »*• powoxv-confidence , instead of being reestablished , cannot but suffer new attacks .

      " This opinion is not new ; in other epoques , great ministers , whom France honoured , and whose memory is guarded by posterity , understood , the necessity of surrounding financiers with consideration . Champfort made the remark that Moliere , who had exposed on the stage all classes of society , had never placed financiers upon the scene ; and he added that it was through Colbert that he had been forbidden by Louis XIV . " It was because Colbert knew that the men who represent credit cannot be attacked in their consideration without credit being equally attacked ; nnd he knew also how much credit is necessary to the prosperity and greatness of states . "

      " Who does not now appreciate the censorship of the press ? The only fault is , that in Paris it is not strictly enough enforced . We suspect that there are railway companies in England who perfectly sympathize with M . Mires and with Colueut . From these generalities M . Mirks came back to his muttons—to liia own resignation and the position of the company ; and again he painted the tempting picture which he , with magnanimous forbearance , was about to abandon . " Thexe are , " he said , " beautiful

      and grand perspectives in all parts of Europe as in France ; but how long , " he asked , " will our transition state continue ? " " You have formed a powerful company ; even if you were to wind up now " Wind up ! Has the great Jules Mirks with his followers come so near to that precipice ? " If you were to wind up now , the security is complete . " The security is c complete V—the shareholders could just get back their property ! " The

      Becurity is complete if you continue . " But why should M . Mntics abstain from leading his followers to those ' beautiful and grand prosnectives ? ' This ia the point ; and the reason ho gives is as grand a stroke of statesmanship aa we remember to have witnessed ; but M . Minis is a great man . The « raison aociale' of tho ' societ 6 en commandite , ' originally entitled « Caisse ct Journal des Clfcmins doEer / that is the registered name of that company is ' Jvtrca Mntfcs and Cio . ;'

      but there is another ' Compaghie des Chemins de Fer et des Houilleres , ' established in 1854 , for objects not very clearly defined in our records ; thirdly , the * Compagnie des Journaux Reunis ' with a capital of 12 O , O 00 Z ., fox objects , we suppose , indicated in its title ; and the ' name of Jules Mires meets us in manv other Did not find

      quarters . -we it , for example , in the agency of a great Spanish loan , by whiek it was calculated that the Spanish Government would net about twenty-three per cent , of the sum subscribed by the lenders ? Why -was it that this great man thought of retreating from the lead of the powerful company which he had formed ? The reason is grand : —

      " When you formed with us , " he asked , " a powerful association of capital , was it merely that it might produce 5 or 6 per cent . ? . . . " . And because the ' powerful society * is descending to that level , M . ' Minis , with mortified pride , resolved to retire . Such was his explanation ; but in the name of a unanimous meeting , Co \ mt Simeon presented

      an address signed by 400 shareholders , possessing 12 , 368 shares , earnestly beseeching M . Mires to continue in the enjoyment of the full confidence of the proprietary ; and the Count , with flattering roughness of remonstrance , moved—" This meeting , fully confident in MCMiRfes , does not accept hia resignation . " .

      "What then is M . Mxaiis ' s position ? He has warned the shareholders that they must expect very much less than the original plan of the association promised them ; and by this course he has obtained a complete bill of ioderanity . beforehand . Can they blame him hereafter , whatever may happen . ? The example is worbh the consideration of some directors in our own great joint-stock companies .

      904 Thriieidbe. Tno. 391, September 19.1...

      904 THriiEiDBE . TNo . 391 , September 19 . 1857

      London Air And Water. Jfour-And-Twenty R...

      LONDON AIR AND WATER . jFour-and-twenty reports of the sanitary officers of various metropolitan districts enable us to arrive at a pretty clear idea of what has been and is being done in London towards improving the . health of the inhabitants and eradicating the pest-spots , which may at am moment be converted into the nurseries

      of a . ravaging epidemic . In looking over these papers , we find one story repeatedly told . In the same parish , on equally favoured ground , a great difference exists in the average amount of disease and death . Take , for example , Islington : the west sub-district is more healthy than the east ; and why ? The houses in the hittor district are smaller ,

      more " persons occupy the same space , ventilation ia imperfect ; the streets , too , are narrower and less airy , and there is a marked absence of tho necossary appliances for cleanliness , comfort , and health . The locality of Laurencebuildings , Newington-common , is represented as being the very hotbed of disease ; the road being many inches deep in decaying vegetable refuse worked up with the detritus of the roads into a thick paste ; the tenements aro themselves filthy in the extreme , very dilapidatedand surrounded by cesspools and

      do-, composing mutter , ltotherhithc , which obtained such fatal notoriety during the cholera of 1840 , passed through tho epidomic ot 1854 with comparative immunity , sanitary measures having been largely carried on there in tho meantime . But tho newlybuilt streets of tho Doptford Lower-road , erected onundrained garden ground and posaoased of a bad water supply , suffered severely from the pestilence . Tho state of some of tho houses , especially in the parishes ot Lambeth and Southwark , it would scarcely

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 19, 1857, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_19091857/page/16/