The Sun.
London, England, 1864-07-29 00:00:00

tional creditors during a period of about threa weeks.
Meanwhile his current and constantly accruing lie.

bilities will have to be provided for either by a new
loan, by the incoming of revenue from taxation, or
by the issue of payer. Though he asks but 50 mil■
lions just now, the unpaid requisitions upon the
Government amounted on the Stn inst. to 91,814,000
dole., and will on Sept. 1, the day when his loan is
to be repaid, amount at the rate of three millions per
diem, which is a more moderate computation than
many financiers allow, to 171 millions additional.
No such sum, or even a tenth of it, can be received
from the tax collectors by the day named ; comes

quently Mr Fessenden must resort to a new loan,
or he must print off to the ultimate dollar the
whole amount of greenbacks which Congress has
authorized the department to put into circulation.
As this last course, either with or without a Federal
victory‘in the battlefield,would send up the premium
on gold to a point highly damaging to Federal credit,

both in the eyes of the world and of its own people,
and as Mr. Fessenden is especially anxious that this
should not be the result of his management, there
remains but the loan. Encouraged by the success
which has attended the efforts of the Emperor of
the French, in setting aside the agony of the
banks and the great capitalists and loan-mongers,
and appealing directly to the people of all classes to
support the Government by the investment of their
small savings, a coterie of philosophers and doctri•
noires, who know a great deal about the negro, but
very little of the war or the spirit of the white labour-
ing population, aro urging upon Mr. Fessenden the
propriety of imitating the Emperor's example.
They insist that the war is popular, that the heart
of the multitude is in it, that a sacred love of negro
freedom will impel the farmers, the traders, the
shopkeepers, and the labouring people to pour their
accumulated wealth, tiny in its driblets, but im■
mouse in its volume, into the National Treasury, at
a fair rate of interest; and that by this means the
hostility of twenty Secessionist capitalists and
bankers will be more than vanquished by the
generous patriotism of the " loyal' millions. These
philosophers take their hopes for facts. They for-
get, or do not know, that the constant terror of a
forced conscription has rendered the war distasteful,
if not odious, to the class whci live from day to day by
their labour or their business, and that negro eman-
cipation, though popular among ladies, clergymen,
lecturers, and philosophers, is but coldy approved by
one portion of the working classes and bitterly op-
posed by the other. They forget that the enormous
rise in the price of food, fuel, clothing, and house
rent, unaccompanied by a similar rise in wages,
aggravated as it is by the burdens of a taxation pre-
viously unknown in America, and almost as onerous
as that which afflicts the Englishman, has deprived
the labouring classes of America of that surplus be-
tween expenditure and income which, before the
war, rendered the American labourer the richest and
most independent man of his class in the world. The
surplus has gone. The war has engulfed it. The
labourer lives from hand to mouth like his compeers
in the old world, and even the prudent and fortu-
nate man who four or five years ago had amassed a
few hundred dollars and put them into the savings
bank to fructify, in order that about this time in the
ordinary course of events he might have been en-
abled to purchase and stock a farm in the bountiful
far West, and sit with his children around him under
the shade of his own vine or fig tree, finds his dol-
lars so depreciated as to be worth but one-third of
what was their value on the day when he deposited
them. The financier or philosopher who depends on
the aid of his class to support the credit of the
Government by any other mode than the payment
of such taxes as fall upon them, and the incidence
of which they cannot avoid, will lean on a broken
reed.

There remains, then, a loan from the capitalists of
America, or a loan from the capitalists of Europe, to
extricate the Government from its present strait.
The first may be effected to a large amount, though
not perhaps at per, or within 10 per cent of it. The
second may not now appear hopeless, for it is
freely spoken of and confidently recommended; but
as in the first plc.ca it hangs upon the issues of war
and the stability of the Union, and in the second
may be effected by the semi-repudiation of which
the States of New York and Ohio have already
been guilty, there may be many slips between
that cup and the lips of Mr. Fessenden. Yet, if all
other resources fail, greenbacks are inexhaustible.
Congress has but to meet and authorise the issue of
another batch of 500,000,000 of them, and all will
again go well—for a little while. Tne spendthrift
will be in funds, the tailor, the jeweller, the wine
merchant, and the horse dealer will receive both
money and fresh orders ; and a great community,
acting the part of a gambler and a prodigal, will
run riot as others have done before it, and, like
others before it, will pay at the auly appointed and
inevitable time the appropriate penalty of bank-
ruptcy and disgrace.

The Story of the Great Eastern Steamship,

(From the Builder.)
The result produced, from whatever cause, may be thus
stated :—£1,000,000 has been spent, and nothing remains
for the shareholders, original or preferential, or for the
bondholders ; for the £25,000 realised at public sale for the
ship, will be hardly sufficient to pay the preference creditors
and the law expenses. Everything available, including office
furniture, was sold before the directors disqualified them-
selves, though they did not forget to send in claims for a
halt-year's fees in arrear ; and all that is left besides the
balance of the £25,000, after paying expenses and prefer
ence claims, is :5, which is in the hands of the official
liquidator. The ship has been bought for this ridicu-
lously small sum by a new company, of which three of the
late directors of the Great Ship Company are the principal
shareholders and directors, Surely this is a state of things
which deserves, nay, demands enquiry, especially just now,
when limited liability companies are increasing in number so
rapidly; for if the directors of a limited company can with
impunity waste all the property intrusted to their care, and
leave a large amount of debt, without anything whatever
to meet it. and without any legal responsibility or accoun-
tability, some new provisions are .most assuredly required,
No private trader in times past could waste his creditors'
property, without incurring any responsibility; and it ap
pears imposssible that when the accounts of the,company
are rendered to the Court of Chancery, some persons car,
escape severe censure. The ship was designed and built
for the Eastern or Indian trade. Every appliance and
fitting was designed for a long voyage, the capacity for
cargo, the space allotted for fuel, the smallness of her power
compared with her tonnage, her size, her height between
decks, the special attention paid to ventilation, were all
considered and provided for a long and mainly tropical
voyage. But the directors into whose hand she fell, either
ignorant of the suitability of the ship for what she was in-
tended, or wedded to other views, decided upon placing her
on short voyages in northern latitudes, where the arrange-
ment applicable to tropical climates became a source of
discomfort, where her capacity for fuel was unnecessary,
where her splendid accommodation for first and second
class passengers was useless, where her speed was not so
superior to every rival, as KI give her any practical advan-
tage, and where indeed every special peculiarity in con•
strue,ion, size, power, and economy of management became
rather sources of loss than of advantage. 1 will assume

that when the directors first determined to divert her from
her original destination, they be:ieved it would be benefi-
cial to the shareholders; but. on what principle of profit
they kept her on the American line, when each of the
eleven voyages produced a great loss, exclusive of the heavy
staff expenses at Liverpool and New York, is quite unac-
countable. The system of losing by every voyage was per-
sisted in by the directors, notwithstanding continual warn-
ings, and the actual results published 'n their balance-sheet.

A MAGISTRATE SUMMONED BT A STREET
PREACHER.—At the Birkenhead County Court, on
Tuesday, Mr Younghnsband, one of the local justices of
the peace, was sued for false arrest and imprisonment by
Abraham John Dowling, a street preacher. Dowling has
on several occasions been before the police-court on various
questions connected with his street preaching. and has come
into collision with Mr Younghusband. On Saturday, June
25, Dowling was preaching ou board one of the Woodside
ferry steamers. Some 1. ersons complained of it as a nuisance,
sia the crew of the boat appealed to Mr Younghueband as
to what they were to de. He directed them to take Dowling
into custody, and they accordingly did so, and detained him
until the boat returned to the Cheshire side, when he was
taken to Briddwell, but afterwards set at liberty. This was
the alleged false imprisonment for which the action was
brought. His Honour (Judge Harden) decided that the
magistrate had exceeded his power, as the bye laws of the
ferry directed that a person contravening them must be
summoned, and they only authorised the infliction of a
penalty, and not imprisonment without a hearing. But
inasmuch as, under Jervis's Act, any magistrate proceeded
against by summons for an act done in his magisterial cape
' city must have a month's notice of the summons before it
could be heard and decided upon, the present case must be
adjourned until the expiry of a month from the date of the
plaintiff's summons issued under the jurisdiction of the
court. Adjourned accordingly.