The Sun.
London, England, 1864-08-27 00:00:00

CLIFTON SUSPENSION BRIDGE,

The directors in their report cobgratulated the
proprietors on the state of the works, and that
the bridge would be ready for public traffic
during the present autumn. The small balance
of capital which was deficient at the last half-
year:y meeting had been provided, and the direc.
tors were, consequently, enabled to avail themselves
of the borrowing powers of the company. The di.
rectors expressed ;their sense of the energy, skill,
and promptitude of the contractors, Messrs. Coch-
rane and Co., and the tn wearied attention of the
resident engineer, Mr Aley. The report of the en-
gineers, Messrs. Hawkshaw and Barlow, stated
that since the last:report the main chains, with the
suspension rods, longittdinal girders, and roadway
girders, had been completed. The flooring of the
roadway and the hand railing were in a forward
state, the building of the tollhouses had been com-
menced, and there was every reason to expect that
the bridge would be reedy for traffic in the month
of October next.

Railway Traffic Relurns for the Week.
Miles Opened. Receipts.

Railways.

1864. 1863. 1864. 1883.
£ 4
Belfast and N. Counties....., 136 136 2,746 2.353
Belfast and County Down 49 49 783 735
Blyth and Tyne 2B 28 2,446 2,110
Bristol and Exeter l2ll 1211 7,552 7,414
Caledonian 252 241 20,014 IMO
Cambrian
Cockermouth& Workington Bl 81 312 376
Cork and Bandon 2O 20 337 371
Cork, Blackrock, &Passage 6l 65 263 261
Cork and Youghal 321 324 580 513
Cornwall 651 531 2,027 1.639
Deeside . 17 17 552 413
Dublin & Belfast Junction.... 63 63 2,044 1.47,1
Dublin and Drogheda 75 75 2,284 1,897
Dublin and Meath
Dub. & Wicklow and Wextd 9ll 481 3,751 2,915
Furness, &c 5O 59 3,416 2,840
Glasgow & South-Western
Gt. Eastern,Nrf k.,&E.Union
Great Northern 353 363 32,709 31,877
Great North of Scotland 53 58 1,797 2,328
Gt. Northn. & Westn. (Irel.) 7lf 711 465 46
iit.Southn. & Westn.(lrind,) 3874 3511 8,356 9,874
Great Western 30564 10561 70,519 63,927
Hull and Hornsea l3 -- 227 -
Inverness & Aberdeen June lO6l 861 1,988 2,025
Inverness & Perth Junction 1191 - 3,030 -
Irish North-Western ll5 145 1,698 1,777
Kent Coast 27 10 3,850 135
Lancashire & Yorkshire 403 3954 46,818 40,250
Limerick and Ennis..
Limerick and Foynes 261 283 114 100
Llanelly 463 463 739 780
London & North-Western
London and Blackwall 53 53 2,141 2,198
London & South-Western
Lond. Brighton, &S. Coast 2671 2504 23,876 22,965
London, Chatham, & Dover 725 721 8,391 6 536
Do. Metropolitan Extension 114 104 2,500 1,400
Man.,Sheflield,& Lincolnsh
Manch. S.J un.& Altrincham ut 91 1,487 1,307
Maryport and Carlisle 2B 28 1,642 1.36
Metropolitan
Midland (incl. N.-Western) 641 611 49,574 46,105
Midland Gt. Westn. of Irind 262 2591 4,732 4,619
Monkland 7ll 714 1,739 1.563
Monmouthsh. Rail. & Canal 44 44 2,708 2,559
North British, Edin., Perth
and Dundee
N-Eastern and Stock. & Darl 1095
North London 9
North Staffordshire 254
Rhymney l9l
Scottish Central
Scottish North-Eastern l3B
Somerset and Dorset 66
South Devon
South-Eastern....
Taff Vale 57
Ulster ... .. 1051
Vale of Clwyd.
Vale of Neath 433
Waterford and Kilkenny 3l
Waterford and Limerick 77
West Cornwall 274
W.Hartlepool Harbr.& Rail._ 525
W'haven,Cleator,& Egrmnt lO
Whitchaven Junction l2
Whitehaven & Furness Jun 35
FOREIGN AND COLONIAL.
Austrian
Bahia and San Francisco
Belgian Eastern J unction 264
Bombay, Baroda, & Cen. Indic 1855
Buffalo and Lake Huron...., 1615
Detroit and Milwaukie lB9
Dutch Rhenish .. lOB3
Eastern Bengal
Eastern of France
East Indian
Grand Trunk of Canada lO9O
Great Central of Belgium lBO
Great Indian Peninsula...- 553
Great Luxembourg . 134
Great Southern of India .... 79
Great Western of Canada... 345
Madras
Madrid, Saragossa. &Aiicant.. 650
Northern of Canada ... ..... .. 91
Northern of France ...... .... 697
Norwegian Trunk
Ottoman
Paris, Lyons, & Mediterrn....... lBO5
Paris and Orleans . 1614
Pernambuco . 771
Royal Danish . 69
Scinde. . lO6
South Austrian
Southern of France ...... 770
Victorian 196
Welland .
West Flanders 75
W. and N.W. of France

5833/4
10791

25,535 23.553
65,281 60,049
3,317 3, 83
8,466 8.676

252
191
1131
138
301
751
306

618 9
15
7,034 6,534
6,695 6,320

988 4.9
4,707 4,226
28,397 29,631
5,527 5,395
2,314 2.158
289 289
3,021 2.334

1051
10

442 36(
1,53 i 1,35 J

891 856
4,421 4.155

693 598
1,059 762
VB/ b 22

35,053 32,015
319 277
2,638 1,011

244
185}
161 i
185
1(
110
1302
0321
1090

4,321 3,031
7,078 6,554

65,831 58,566
21,141 19,471
20,557 18,437
5,993
8,350 0,327
4,726 4,610

587 "573
10,032 8,667
5,96 ) 4 670
18,020 22,313

65,720 62,114
1,5.5 3,465
431 346
137,,90 133,210
71,229 15,902
624 638

18}
1713
14n-

105
1484
680
196

1,098 1,955
51,494 50,059
31,698 30,6;7
8,393 7,035
422 ;59
1043 1,178
59,018 5.,933

Confederate Financial Prospects and Plans,

In the brilliant administratian which we predict for the
new Confederate Secretary of the Treasury, it is only jus-
tice to Mr Memminger to remember that the most danger-
ous crisis in the financial sitiation was actually passed
when the reins of effice were transferred, and that the
measures to which the Confederacy looks hopefully for
relief were already in euccessful operation, These measures,
forming in the aggregate a system of unprecedented cora-
preheasiveness, may be classed under two heads. Those
by which, under the doable action of compulsory funding
and rigid taxation, the redendant currency is reduced
within manageable dimensions, had already, at the date of
the late secretary's report, commenced to exert their salu-
tary effect, as is proved by the enormous excess of the
appropriations under previoes estimates over the actual
expenditure of the different departments of the Govern-
ment. The other class of measures, by which the foreign
commerce of the country is made an arm of the national
defence, have worked with even more rapid efficacy, as is
proved by the vigorous importation of Confederate cotton
into Liverpool and tht present quotations of the Confe-
derate foreign loan, which even the news of a naval
defeat off Mobile cannot depress be:ow double the mer-
chantable value of corresponding Federal securities. The
principle which underlies these measures is that the pre.
cious stores of cotton which the world outside is eager to
buy at even five times its price inside the blockade, are so
much sap and life-blood in the body politic, not only not to
be squandered, but to 3e readered most efficiently available
for the public good. The Legislature reasoned that block-
ade-running was theoretically and practically a military
operation, and should be subject to the same laws. No one
dreams of supplying a camp or an army upon abstract
theories of political economy, and the Confederate country
is only a vast camp and the Confederate people a vast army.
It was a long time before the statesmen of the South, all edu-
cated in a sect militant of uncompromising free trade, could
bring themselves to acknowledge tb at there might be excep-
tions to their favourite rule, and that, while poison would
always be poison, it might at times be a necessary, and even
the only, remedy of a morbid frame. The interval of hesita-
tion did ranch snischief. It bled the confederacy for the ad-
vantage of adventurers who, while pocketing their spoils,
claimed to bo public benefactors. It placed the credit of
the Government into the hands of men without credit, and
at the mercy of firms of straw. There is in the throes of
every national crisis a brief period during which the con-
tractor erfeurnisseur is a patriotic hero, quickly followed
by a reaction which denounces him with equal vehemence
as a robber. A people which entered upon war of self-de-
fenceeavtearl delusion, 'an jewels with the determination that every man's life and
Y Nvon v
necessary, was not likely to labour long under such a
f
one's devotion was exposed
Where
ees vheory should be the public property, if
to so crucial a test, shme pretensions to patriotism and
disinterestedness could not long endure. At the same
time the genius of the Southern people is so little prone to
centralisation that they were saved the er:or of falling into
an opposite extreme, and despising the genuine aid which
private enterprise, and skill, and experience could alone
afford. A middle ground was therefore occupied and
firmly held. The discovery had been made, and was
acted upon, that if privaaa enterprise could probably run
the blockade, a great Government with a Treasury
Department to manage the financial transactions with a
War Department to superintend transportation and
storage, with a Navy Department to select vessels and
crews, with an astonishingly solid credit abroad, could at
least, do the same. But, while this discovery was acted
upon, private capital and private enterprise were not dis-
couraged from the competition, provided only that a reason-
able guarantee was gi ?en that for every bale of cotton pri-
vately exported there should be returned an equivalent of
practical utility. The result has been that the Confederate
armies were never better supplied, that the agents of the
Government buy at the lowest cash prices iu European
markets what previously was paid at fabulous rates, that
the small foreign loan has been largely diminished by re-
demption, and, it is no Secret to add, that a considerable
balance is actually accursulating abroad to the credit of the
Confederate 'Treasury. Never has the financial condition
of a belligerent country Outside its own boundaries been so
soundly prosperous—arid to those who know this condi-

tion the rumours, periodically propagated by the enemy,
of another Confederate foreign war loan appear simply
ridiculous, The only time that such a loan was even
thought of, when actually offered, was that to which Mr
Mernminger refers in his last report, when he says that
military reverses had rendered it impracticable, fur a reason
ho does nor, state, viz., that the three million loan was then
at a quotation at which the Confederate Government was
unwilling to discount its credit.
These principles of commercial legislation, under anoma-
lous circtamitauce, supported a they are by complete sue-