The Express.
London, England, 1853-09-05 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, MONDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 5, 1853.

week and "inuralay, when the resolution to raise the porary ease, experienced in the Money Market after
rate of interest was adopted by the directors. We he had begun, was cl*arly due to operations being
may be pretty sure, from the condition of the ex- su-'oended for the supply of the Russian and Turkish
change and the coctinued export of gold, and frim markets, and to order] being withheld which mer-
the continued activity of trade, combined with a' chants were doubtful would ever be executed..
great demand for money at the close of the I Our readers will notice that we omit all mention
week to meet the bills that had to be taken
I _
of the bullion in the Bunk, and to some of them it
up on Saturday, that the bullion and the may appear like the omission of Hamlet from the
private deposits in the Bank continued last I tragedy,
week,—es the week before,—to decline. We may 1 but we stated on Tuesday last that since
gold is regularly imported and exported to the ex-
be quite certain that the public deposits continued to
increase, and we may infer,—but for this we have no I tent of 2,000,0001. a month it has ceased to be, any
more than wool or coffee, an indication of the want
other warrant than the general state of the money
market,—that the private securities, instead of deems- or the supply of capital. As it moves out of the
Bank the notes of the Bank are poured in, and we
ing, as the week before last, increased, while the really take into account all the substantial effects of
government securities remained as usual. an increase or a diminution of gold when we state
On the 20th ult. we pointed out that the loanable the number of notes in circulation and the amount
means of the Bank were less on the 6th of August, of the deposits and the amount of the Bank advances.
1853, than on the 7th of August, 1852, by 1,594,8661. ; In fact, the amount of gold, though now five millions
and that it had at the same time lent 1,700,6801. less than in the beginning of the year, is much
more. Together the two sums make 3,295,5461., or greater than the Bank has been for years accustomed
more than a tenth part of the loanable means of the to hold.
Bank, which was in so much worse a condition to

lend in August 18.53, than in August 18.52. The
returns of August 27th, or of three weeks later,
show a slight increase in the Bank resources, and a
much larger increase in its advances. The figures
are these :

RUSSIA AND TURKEY.

The Wanderer, of Vienna, publishes a letter from
Constantinople (Aug. Ds) according to which the
Turkish troops between the Danube and the Balkan,
amounted, at that date, to 100,000 men. When the
redifs arrived, it was expected that their number
would he augmented to 150,000. The head-quarters
of divisions are at Varna, Basarjik, Kansa, Widdin,
Sistow, Rustchuk, and Silistris. The troops are in
echelon on two lines; one making face to the Danube,
the other resting on the Balkan. These dispositions
are said to have been made by M. Nlagnan, a French
officer, to whose orders Omer Pacha has been in-
structed by the Divan to confirm. The army of
Anatolia is said to be 60,000 strong.
In the Wanderer, of the 29th ult., it is stated
that Russian officers maintain that the Emperor
will withdraw his troops from tie Danubian Pro-
vinces. Prince Oortschakoff, who, they say, was
inspecting the line of the Danube hen the despatch
announcing the decision of the Divin on the Vienna
proposals reached him, returned immediately to
headquarters, and the same night sent off a number
of couriers in various directions. Count Bual
Schauenstein is said, in the same paper, to have had
long conferences on the 26th and 28th ult. with the
Russian Ambassador, Baron Meyeedorff. On the
evening of the 26th a Russian coiner set off with
despatches for St. Petersburg.
A letter from Smyrna of the lith ult., in the
Augsburg Gazelle, says :—" It is sail that the united
fleet is to leave for this port it it does not enter the
Dardanelles. In addition to the sosth wind, which
exposes it to eintinual danger, the vessels have been
attacked by sickness, In the English fleet two cap-
tains and two other officers have already died. In
the French fleet the common sailors only have suf-
fered. Water is scarce, and the provisions are not
good. On Saturday the Austrian squadron is to
leave for the waters of Syria and Egypt.

August 6. August 27.
Circulation E25,039,156 £24,211,854
Rest

l'ublic deposits 2,218,227 4,601,685
Private deposits

£43,075,594 £13,288,333
Or the capital at the command of the Bank derived
from the money it borrows from the public by issuing
its notes, and the deposits of the Government money,
and of the money of individuals, and what remains
in its possession of its own capital, was 192,7411.
more on the 27th than on the 6th. But it will be
noticed that every one of these items was smaller on
the 27th than on the 6th, except the Government de-
posits; and these being placed in the Bank to answer
all the drafts of the Government, and especially to pay
the dividends and the Government disbursements

which fall to be paid at the end of this month and
the beginning of the next, can only be lent by the
Bank for a very short period, and are of no avail in
discounting a single mercantile bill that has more
than forty days to run. In fact, therefore, the in-
crease in the public deposits may be discarded, and
that being 2,383,4,181., it follows, deducting the
increase, 192,7411., that the actual loanable means of
tho Bunk had decreased on the 27th by 2,190,7171.
On looking at the increase in the public deposits in
the corresponding three weeks of 1852, we find that
it was 2,494,7151., or 111,2571. more than the increase
in the corresponding three weeks of the present year.
As the revenue must now, from our enormous con-
sumption, be increasing very rapidly, this compara-
tive decline in the Government deposits, from what-
ever cause it may arise, must be a warning fact to
the Bank. It is clear that all payments made into
the Bank on account of the Government that can be,
are withheld; and the Bank may anticipate, while
the payments it will have to make on its account in
October will be undiminished, that the receipts may
fall considerably short of the usual sum. Such a
circumstance at least dictates great caution to the
Bank, when it is perfectly plain that one great
source of its diminished power to lend already is the
low state of the Government deposits —4,601,6851. on
August 27,18.53, and 6,318,4281. on August 28, 1852.
Now that we have seen how very little the nomi-
nal loanable resources of the Bank are increased,
and how much the sums it can actually lend are
decreased, let us look at its advances. They were—

August 6. Auguit 27.
On government securities £13,027,333 £13,027,582
On private securities
£26,254,034

.£26• 858 417
___

Increase £604,383

So that in three weeks, while the actual loanable
resources of the Bank had decreased by upwards of
2,000,0001., its advances had increased more than
600,0001. If the lending power of the Bank, there-
fore, was comparatively small on August 6, it
had become much lees on August 27. The pre-
vious advances on the rate of interest had completely
failed to improve its resources; there was obviously
a greater demand on it for money at the rate of in-
terest which prevailed previous to last Thursday than
it could prudently supply, and it had no alternative
we think than to act as it did, and raise the rate of
interest on its loans.

Wo have drawn all our statements from the Bank
accounts exclusively, and from them alone we are
sure, if the Bank Directors bo only reasonably provi-
dent, will they draw the rules for their conduct.
They have nothing to do with the exchange, or with
trade, or with advances to foreign countries, the rate
of wages, the state of the corn markets, or any-
thing else bat their own books, though over
the items in them all these circumstances

may exercise great influence. The day has
gone by when it was tolerated, that the
Directors of the Bank of England, composed of
second and third-rate merchants,—all of whose capital
has been transferred to the Government except a driblet
of less than 4,000,0001., and whose chief means of
lending are the sums it is exclusively privileged to
borrow from the people on its notes, and receives of
public and private money in deposit,—should under-
take to prescribe what branches of traffic should be
checked or encouraged, what capital should be lent
to or withheld from other nations, and to what
extent men should carry on their business. We no
longer tolerate the Government interfering with
such matters directly, and we surely shall not tole-
rate such a corporation as the Bank of England
assuming aoy such power. Yet this measure of
raising the rate of interest on its own
loan., of which it is to be the exclusive judge,
by looking at its own means, and the wants of its
own customers, is mingled by some of our contempo-
raries with a great variety of matters, and described
as a measureof high national policy, dictated by some
far-seeing views of a too extensive trade, of a possible
want of iron, or some apprehended unsuitable diffu-
i pion of the precious metals. We are us sensible as
our contemporaries of the influence of such circum-
stances over the public welfare; we have shown, we
I think, that we know how to appreciate them, by
eontinually warning our readers that the rate of dis-
-1 count would rule high—bat we decline to follow
them in their wide and wandering discussions.
The great subject for inquiry and the great sub-
ject of commercial and of public interest is the rela-
tire abundance or scarcity of capital, and the causes
' which make it relatively abundant or scarce ; from
which we may form an opinion how long the pre-
sent comparative scarcity is likely to last raid how
intense it may become. We shall not now enter
on so wide a subject ; we shall only warn our
readers that all the phenomena arc much more
social than political, and that political causes, though
blown into great importance by some of our contem-
poraries, have only a subordinate influence. Great
stress is laid by the Timex'City authority on the Turkish
dispute as enhancing the demand for capital when
one obvious and avowed effect of that dispute has
been to suspend a great variety of operations, to
check boll exports and imports here and in other
countries,—and consequently it has tended to make
capital cheap instead of dear. The rise in the rate of
discount began before the Emperor of ltussta began
to quarrel with the GRAND Dag, and some tem-