The Sun.
London, England, 1852-05-13 00:00:00

THE IRON TRADE.

BIR3IINGIIAM, MUNDAI'.—The general aspect of the
iron trade remains unchanged. A slight improvement
i.rs the price of rails has h',2en obtained, both in Staf-
tordshire and other disricts, to the extent of 51. per
ton, with a considerably increasing demand; and we hear
that several fresh contracts are now in the market, in con-
sequence of the makers holding out for 19s. advance. But
sheets, nail roads, rounds, and use iron meet with a rather
more limited sale at home, and without a shade of ten-
dency to better figures. In the pig trade very little is
doing, and that without alteration. Both manufactured
and pig iron still exhibit the same extreme latitude of
variation in prices, and consequently, it may reasonably •
be supposed, in quaiitrals.o; the former extending from
net to 6/. tor bars, and other descriptions
after
the same r.roportion; and the latter from 425. 6d. to 70s.
per ton. Notwithstanding the grievous complaints of the
want of remuneration in that branch of the trade, we hear
that instead of a reduction of the number of furinces al-
ready in blast, more are about to be act to work. The
two at the late unfortunate Our Farm Works are men-
tioned as far progressed in the requisite prepartvioll3.
D:ily experience more thoroughly confirms th• opinion
that nothing is to b.) expected or feared at Birminghamfrom the itoro 'tiction of the Nerthamptonshire story*.
Whether as to cost, per tentage of iron, or the peculiar
properties it contains detrimental to the furnace, it seer"
alike undesirable. Indeed, it is g, ncrally supposed that
the parties most interested in it will be found to have
considerably burnt their fixers.—Aris's Birreilngharn
Gazette.

PREPARATIONS FOR A NEW PLAGUE.
The pestilence has rgain bruken out in the Easc pre;
cisely as it has done cn previous occasions. It is fnll
time, therefore, that the met'', politan public were up
and stirring. The gas of their graveyards, their oess-
pools, their sewers, is doing its work in preparation for
the scene of horrors. Every year it is intensifying
more and more, as every year its fruits are multiplYlag•
The general mortality or the metropolis of late years
has immensely increased, and we are fast retrograding
to the state of things before the time of the great
plague,
when the population of the metropolis woulrl-
haveactually become extinct in a brief series of years
had it not bee n for constant replenishment from the pro-_
vinces. Nay, the time has already come, according to
statisticians, for " London, if not refreshed from th°.•
country, would be a desert in fifty years." Did we IT
say with truth, some time ago, that if over Macaulay a
civiliz d New Zealander stood on the ruins of London-
bridge and beheld nought but a solitary, uninhabited
waste—the poisonous filth from graveyards, cesspool!,
and stagnant sewers, with which the metropolitan site 15
saturated, must alone have done it all? The deatbs (.)1
the London born already exceed their births. Their
blood is poisoned. Their stamina is sinking. They sra,
even dwarfed in stature and dimensions. And not all
the healthier blood infused into London from the country
can prevent its rapid decay unless the site be cleared of
those abominations which breed disease and death and
new abominations even in the midst of death to intensify
the hideous fermentation of mortality.—Builder.