The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-23 00:00:00

LutheranGiurch at lirem,n, w

;(inntry in the latter part of his lie. His
established 11:;naielt.' as a cloth ninnufae:.ur:r

::,Joint

at Llrkbeer, in Devonshire, a::d by the eNcreise of

untiring industry osequired a clnsiduable forturvi.
left four sons, two of whom, John and Francis,

cme to London and set up in business es irnnorters.
of wools and dye-stuffs, acting also as agents to the
Larkbeer cloth factory. The elder brother, Sohn,
afterwards withdrew from business, and retired
to Exeter; whereupon Francis, then sole head
of the firm, wound up his old affairs and began
devoting himself to banking transactions. He specu -
lated largely in Government loans, and soon became
the friend m 3 financial adviser of the Premier,

Lord Shelburne, who used to etylc him the Prince
of Merchants. Shelburne's successor,
Pitt,
thought it necessary to gain the goodwill of the in-
fluential banker by the gift of a baronetcy, and on
May 29, 1793, Mr. Baring became Sir Francis Bar-
ing. The founder of the great banking house, born
April 18, 1740, died Sept. 12, 1810, leaving behind
him a fortune estimated at above two millions ster-
ling. Francis Baring in his own person was, witn-
out comparison, the most successful accumulator of
wealth produced in modern times.

It is not without interest to follow the fortunes
of the house of Baring for another generation or
two. Sir Francis Baring, by his marriage to a

n;e3e of the Archbishop of Canterbury, left five sons,
the three eldest of whom—Thomas, Alexander, and

Henry—became partners in the banking establish-

went. Sir Thomas withdrew from business coon
after the death of his father, thinking it unbecom..
ing in a baronet to be a banker, and Mr. Henry
Baring likewise retired not long after for a very
different reason. Henry Baring was passionately
addicted to gambling, which he carried on at a high
rate at the Pa!ais Royal, Paris, and other famous

hells of the time, where his nightly appearance,

with mountains of gold and bank notes before him,
was the wonder of all beholders, He was by no

means an unlucky disciple of the rouge et-noir, for he
severel times broke the Enterprise generale des jeux,
carrying off sums which would have been princely
fortunes to any but Barings. Notwithstanding this
luck, his presence at the Continental gaming tables
was naturally considered a scandal at the London
banking-house of Baring Brothers, and, after some
negotiation, Henry Baring was induced to evithdraw
from the firm. There now remained, as head of the
establishment, Alexander Baring, born October 27,
1774, and brought up in the house of Messrs. Hope.
When the Messrs. Hope returned to England, is
consequence of the occupation of Holland by the
troops of revolutionary France, Alexander Beeing
left the establishment and went to the United Ste tee,
where he married the eldest daughter of Mr.
Bingham, then considered " the richest man. in
America," and who brought him a fortune of 900,0(10
dollars. Mr. Alexander Baring had no score::
become head of the houso than he entered on. a
series of monetary operations on a gigautic scale
and of European importance. The greatest of
these—one of the greatest ever performed by a
single banker—was, that he freed France from,
the incubus of an occupation of Russian, Prus
sian, and Austrian armies of 50,000 raen each, b y
the loan of a SUM of 27,238,038 francs, or eboi it
£1,100,000 at 5 per cent. reute. This raome
tolls trac;ion occasioned the saving of the wi sty
French Premier, the Dake do Richelieu :—"'nacre
are six great Powers in Europe—England, PI-lance,
Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Baring Brcthers."
Alezanthr Baring—" Alexander the Cie
died at Lon,gl,'.t, Wilts, May 13, 181 S, having, een
elevated to the peerage, r.r...;.1f.:r the title of Lord
Ashburton, in 1835. He left four sons, the eAcst
of whom, William Bingham—who died but a few
months ago—succeeded him in the family honours,
while the second, Francis, born in May, 1800, took
for a while the nominal direction of the firm. In
this capacity he engaged in some remarkable trans-
actions. He purchased among others, the whole of
the territory surrounding the lake Tezcuco, on the
island of which stands the city of Mexico, and thus
made himself, in a sense, master of the capital of a
great country. The other members of the firm of
Baring and Co. were, however, startled by the
gigantic nature of the purchase, and, after great
efforts, managed to get rid of the supposed Frank-
enstein. Had they kept their purchase, who knows
but that the "Notables," who recently sat in Imperial
electoral conclave, might have chosen a member of
the house of Baring, instead of the house of Hepee
burg, to fill the throne of Mexico ? Mr. Francis
Baring married, in 1833, Clara Hortense, daughter
of the Duke of Bassano, Napoleon's First Secretary
of State, and settled at Paris, in one of the princely
residences of the place Vendome, which he pur-
chased for £64,000. By the recent death of his
elder brother, Mr. Fiancis Baring has become Lord
Ashburton, and retired from the firm, in which, for
some time previous, he was only a nominal partner.
The head of the house at the present moment is Mr.
Thomas Baring, next brother of Sir Francis Thorn-
hill Baring, the third baronet, who was Chancellor
of the Exchequer in Lord Melbourne's Ministry.
Mr. Thomas Baring was born in 1800, and in -1841
was elected member for Huntingdon, which borough
he has continued to represent ever him. The Im-
perial Parliament has now no less than six Barings
—one in the House of Lords and five in the Com-
mons. Few families of Great Britain have risen to
higher influence, both in the political and commer-
cial world, in the course of a century, than the
descendants of the humble German pastor, whom
chance drove, in his declining years, from Bremen
o London.—Railway News.