The Sun.
London, England, 1855-04-17 00:00:00

THE SUN', LONDON, TUESDAY _EV-ENING, APRIL 17, 1665.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

' years appears to us too short a term, since the burden Is then
thrown in, the thape of a high rate of interest on one genera-
tion. Our object is not prompt repayment at a great sacri-
fice, but the certainty that the debt will be gradually extin-
. guished. _ Lastly, we have great doubts whether the
Chancellor' of the Exchequer would not have made a far
sim~iTei and more successful operation if ho had addressed
himself at once to popular subscription, and allowed
the public at large to contribute to the loan in two or
three different forms, but at a fixed price, in any sums
above 1001. The French Government have twice resorted
with extraordinary success to thiS expedient, and we cannot
but believe that the wealth of all classes in this country
would readily supply all that is needed, and rescue the Ex-
chequer from the hands of the loan contractors. There is,
on the contrary, very little originality in Sir Coruewall
Lewis's plan, and what little novelty wa are able to detect in
it is palpably ine.mvenient. If he hopes to introduce new
principles into the mode of contracting public loans in this
country he must apply to a different class of capitalists. In
other words, if he has a different article to sell he must try
another class of customers. But this plan will probably dis-
please one set of lenders of money without opening the
purse-strings of another set; and, unless favourable intelli-
gence he received in the course of this week from Vienna or
from Sebastopol. there may be something critical in the suc-
cess of the operation ou the terms contemplated by the
Chancellor of the Exchequer.

ace
VISIT OF THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS.
(From, the Times of this day.)
No one who knows anything of the British people would
be surprised at the scene yesterday presented iu this metro'
polls. Friend and foe, the most insular Englishman and the
most enlightened refugee from any or all the despotisms of
Europe, would be equally prepared for the sight of a count-
less multitude standing for hours, wherever they could stand,
to catch a sight of the Emperor and Empress of the French,
and to contribute such slight manifestations of good-will as
their overpowering curiosity would allow. We shall expose
ourselves to the imputation of flattery when we express our
simple belief that from the moment their Imperial Majesties
left their own palace on Sunday morning to 7 o'clock last
night, when they entered that of Queen Victoria, they were
never for one moment out of the sight and sound of one con-
tinued ovation. We can answer for all between Calais
and Windsor Castle. The most striking part of this
progress was the five miles, for it was little more,
from the South-Eastern to the Great Western station,
and this was traversed so - slowly that an hour and
a-half elapsed between the arrival at the one station and-the
departure at the other. At every point of 'easy distance the
populace, the carriages, the spectators from the wiudowsi,
were as numerous and as eager as if the spectacle had been
confined to that oae spot, and as if the occasion had been one
of the proudest in the annals of our own country. Of course
much of this must be set down to the merest and sheerest
curiosity—to the circumstance that an Emperor, and, still
more, an Empress, is seldom seen in England ; to the promi-
nent position which these personages have occupied in the
talk of the day for several years. Yet there remains the
question what it is that has so wonderfully moved our curio-
sity in this instance ?—why do we, a constitutional people,
flock in crowds to do a species of homage to one who bas
raised himself above constitutions and laws; and why are we
ready to doff the hat, to bow the head, to wave the handker-
chief, or, at all events, assist with our presence, the trium-
phant progress of a self-raised absolute sovereign, the sole
source of law, the single type of political unity, and the only
pledge of order, to forty millions of our nearest neighbours,
once our enemies and new our allies ?
Question, indeed, there is actually none, for, as we have
observed, no one is surprised. Given all the conditions, in-
cludhig the thoroughly summer's day breaking upon us after
au unexampled length of ungeuial weather, and the event
might have been confidently predicted. The truth is, that
when everything has been said that can be said to the dispa-
ragement of this Emperor, his is a character and career tho-
roughly, and indeed singularly, appreciable by the British
people. In no country is decision of character, single-
ness of aim, fixedness of purpose, and useful ambition,
more in honour. We hold up to our children the in-
stances of those who have raised themselves from a lumble
position, or forced their way through great difficulties and
discouragements. In the face of that precept in the Catechism
which piously inculcates that we should be content with that
station where God has placed us; even ourreligious societies
diffuse little story books exp..may “a,.pt..a L. rester
,youthful ambition. Our most popular moralists urge de-
cision of character by almost .every motive, and for al-
most any object. We point with pride 'to the com-
paratively recent or lowly origin of our great fami-
lies. Every father in the middle ranks of ' life tells his
children how the sons of cheesemougers and publicans become
bishops, and the sons of barbers become Lord Chancellors,
and the son of a country parson the great Lord Nelson.
Even in the career of Wellington, we choose to forget that he
was born and bred in a Court, with Unbounded influence at
his back, and merely remember that he was a time in small
lodgings, and obliged to borrow money from his landlord. It
is carefully noted where the King of the Belgians lodged
when he first appeared in this country, and what was his in-
come, not so much for envy of his rise, but because this is. the
favourite type of British biography. . Whether this be not
carried too far, and whether many minds are not early, dis-
gusted with appeals to what their own instinct tells them are
inferior motiVes, we will not now inquire. It is enough-that
this is the.habit of this country, and that it is the tendency
of the British social state to leave no alternative, and to
compel men to rise or to sink lower still. The mode of
raising may not be quite the same as in other coun-
tries, for very few ri,e here by the military or civil
service of their country. The mere open and frequented
paths of ambition are, perhaps, the mercantile, the legal, and
the clerical. Yet, on the whole, we make it a point to rise.
by fair means, or by those that are less fair, and our moral
and religious authorities are always ready to commend the
energy and decision that are rewarded with success.. So,
though we haie only one Cromwell, and though we are
all pleased and proud to rememb'er that the Duke of Marl-
borough becatne a humble subject when he was strpt of his
command, and even the Duke of Wellington did little with
his influence except advising his brother peers to bow to
public opinion, we can still honour and admire the man who,
in strictness of language, may be said to have triumphed over
the liberty—though in fact over the license--of his country,
and who has made himself that which .we would net tolerate
ourselves a day longer than wo could help it.
But in this Emperor Louis Napoleon we see a great 'deal
more than the mere man of iron will and iron hand. We see
the first friend and ally, in a substantial, active, and recipro-
cal sense of those words, that we have found on the opposite
shores of the Channel for many hundred years. We see the
man who has restored order, prosperity, and power to his
country iu the course of two or three years, at a time when it.
threatened to sink under its own ruins, or to overflow, to the
desolation of Europe. We see the man who has committed
himself and his fortunes to the task of adorning and improv-
ing his capital with every grace and invention of art. We
see the man who does what we, with our boasted self-govern-
ment, our Parliament, and all the apparatus of a free consti-
tution, cannot do, whether in the conduct of his armies
abroad, or in the•execution of great and beneficial works at
home. We see the man, who while Englishmen are care-
lessly and thoughtlessly, not •to say disloyally, avowing that
the Crown is only a pageant, the Sovereign only a fiction, and
loyalty only a name, cannot even for a moment be regarded as
less than a Monarch. With our perpetual jealousy of the
Crown, with our boasted succession of triumphs over the pre-
rogative, with our expulsion of dynasties, our Bills of Rights,
our Acts of Settlement, and our constitutional monarchy, it
is not for us to quarrel with the choice of a great nation, or

to compare the ancestry of Id. Bonaparte with that of his
contemporary, George 111. Thr:re are many noble pedigrees
in Europe more ancient and less. tinny than our, own regal
line. The' Empress of the French. herself is one of those Guz-
mans whom the great Speni.h humorist, writing in the.
reign of our Elizabeth, makes his hero enumerate among the
-ohle-t xixl iAioat g.evio:tC not,iii‘itikof Europe,... But we in this
country have ,igreed; net without reasnu-,--to 'pay no gi-eat
gard to ancestry without worth. It is not for us, then, to
insist that the grandfather of the present Empe, or of the

Freud' wits a private Corsican e:entlem au nor, t speak the
truth, do we en.e much about it. We see in our illustrious

visitor the man who has restored his own fortunes and those

of France from a seemingly irreparable downfall, and, what
is more, the man who taught his nation to believe in active
alliance with England, neither degrading nor injurious to,
itself, nor unituportaLt to the interests of humanity.

THE NEW GOVERNMENT LOAN.
(From the Times of this day.)
We publish in another place the particulars and conditions
of the proposed loan, to which we drew the attention of the
public on Saturday last, and we arc enabled to add to this
document an authentic statement of the explanatory declara-
tions made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on this occa-
sion, &woe of which will be found to be of very great import-
ance to the financial interests of the country. It is unneces-
sary that we should here anticipate the answer of the moneyed
world to Sir C. Lewis's proposals, for in these questions the
1 ractical success of a great financial operation Is the only test
of ability and judgment, and wo have no desire to increase
difficulties which may affect the public resources and the
national credit. Yet we cannot but entertain considerable
doubt whether these proposals, in the form is which they are
made, will command the support which such au operation
requires. The loan is to be fur 16,000,0001., and we are dis-
tinctly informed that this amount " is found d on the full
amount of the provision estimated to be required for the
service of the whole year." The biddings to be made on
Friday next must be for the whole loan of 16,000,000/., 'so
that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is resolved to place
himself entirely in the hands of one or more of the great capi-
talists or contractors w‘lo may undertake the risk of the ope-
ration, and the competition must be confined within very
narrow limits, since the number of banking or mercantile
houses prepared to deal in sums of such magnitude is neces-
sarily very limited. The instalments of the loan are so ar-
ranged that they will be payable in the next nine mont' s,
and the last instalment of 10 per cent. will become due on
the 10th of December. No discount is to be allowed for pre-
payme,,t,iand no exemption from income tax ou the first
scrip dividends, nor will there be any reserve for public com-
panies.
These conditions are not, it will be observed. of a nature to '
facilitate the operation or to attract the capitalist. We must
therefore seek in the form of the loan itself for some consideration
Sir Cornewall Lewis's plan is to give" the contractors Three
everylea
a altoop/; r , subscribediaas
far
as Consols are at this
or advantage which may float the scheme. The main pautiodinaingiigmttetoehnfine
say,Annuities
concerned;3 per
cent.
but,foi •
time about 10 per cent. below par, , the difference must be
Pinelm. Coneneyt—Ctehnasteliisdatoted
made up by some other means. For this purpose, the Chan-
as the principal sum is
cellor of the Exchequer proposes to add a terminable annuity
for 30 years to the fixed amount of Consols, and it is upon
the greater or less amount of this terminable annuity that
the biddings and ultimate adjudication of the loan will depend.
Such a proposal is, to say the most of it, a very faint recog-
nition of that principle of terminable annuities for which we
ventured the other day to contend. The proportion of the
annuity to the :i per cent. stock is, in the present state of the
market, about one-tenth of the whole—a mere crust of Lread
to a whole bowl of sack. But the idea which seems to have
struck the Chancellor of the Exchequer is that, in exchange
for the permanent liability imposed on the country, he should
;nen ae,
emi
ave
nel yda ,
iacrd thenidtenormous
theistdebt
ebb
receive an equal amount of money, while the premium paid
for that money should be liquids, ed by an annual charge
e
ex-
tending over only 30 years. This part of the plan has some
and is, we think, not unsound. It relieves us frome
that which is the lasting evil and disgrace. of the loans
etvheenoteheeanisotferceosntseoflittatetdgisgteoacktieiteei;eiuinnyoesfseaib'peittaol
actuallycon-
tracted
inequality b
incurred.y hbel it•w.
ePittee taThnhecele
Ihdei
ekes
tyu
willc ce
actually
successors—namely, or le •sm—ai
hmergedope thati n
Paid by the G
areit
whichivil opposedina ti loy thcaseepile-
overnment
for this
se ra. be
accommodation
md reduced. 0
ais But-the
distinctpric e
from w
hat
thewe may term
the body of the loan. That price will depend on
We do not disguise from ourselves that in
paid.evdooemj
or libp ra le iot
fyi
atoelfrsntslhsi
terminable
ableaannuities contractors,
nuii
e s butwe ,
liquidatedplincipl
the City, and that the only form of loan thoroughly
judices, and perhaps to the interests
accept-
able there is the most marketable commodity—namely,
Con-
sols; But we are not the less convinced theh Con-
terminable annuities, as far as it can be adopted,o principle of
most beneficial to the permanent and general is by far the
nation. It is said that the capitalists- of this interests of the
be induced to purchase or to hold stocks country cannot
ture, in which the repayment of the c of a temporary na-
ture,
in the higher rate of inter capital is, as it were,
fact that from 1815 to 1839 the terminable But we have the
debt increased from 1,894,612/. to 4,29ne,b1e annuities of our
of 1808 and some subsequ nt acts; and ,173/. under the act
tions of permanent annuities were thusthat equivalent por-
tions
an estimated capital of 68,145,9071. cancelled equal, in all,
terminable annuities are not popular withlthough, therefore,
are not convenient or proper investments the brokers, and
trust, there is a considerable class of for money held in
ons • to
offer superior advantages, and to theseP
theyers whom they
times accessible on liberal terms. But ought to he at all
Lewis's plan the amount' of terminableillSirC°rllewall annuities
one-tenth of the whole sum, and, as
he has garnished the
is but as
Consols with this appendage, he compels
take one with the other, whether it suits ' the contractor -to
s his purpose or not.
One person may prefer Consols,
another m
of the terminable annuity, but few will, are
may prefer a share
double investment of so inconsistent acharacter. to hold a
party will be satisfied. On the one halid th
of dealers in money will be disposed to co e ordinary class
m
tion of annuity annexed to their slice of
plain of the par
Consols ; on the
other band, those fundholders who, as • private persons or as
managers of the insurance companies, may prefer a higher
rate of interest, receive this annuity in conjunction
far larger proportion of perpetual Three ljnetion
par
with a
Cents.il
! tilt' Finciplo of torraialat wanuitios IN t 9 );9 1
Ain'
l
___ -- -- - --- fairly tri ,30