The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-30 00:00:00

The WEATHER.—Sun Office, Dec. 30, 1862,

Highest since Noon yesterday
Lowest during the night ...........
This day at Noon 39
Barometer-29.44.
Wind—Westerly; light, fine but cold weather.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THIS DAY.—Morning, 9h. 2m.—Afternoon, 9h. 38m.
To-moßitow.-Morning, 10h. 14m.—Afternoon, 10h. 47m.

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ZrZ

'''4 '3.ut

LONDON, TUESDAY, DEC. 30, 1862.

A French Financier is perpetually more euo
looking forward a great deal further than into the
middle of next week. It has just proved so in the
instance of M. FOI7LD. His penetrating glance
reaches forward even to the close of the year after
next ! His latest Budget, though in many parti-
culars far less pretentious than its immediate pre-
decessor, takes into account successively the pro-
bable results of that predecessor ; the calculations
of the Budget next ensuing (that of 1863), the one,
that is, actually here under consideration ; and,
finally, the estimates of the ordinary and extraor-
dinary Budgets of 1864 ! A tolerably comprehen-
sive survey for any financier to take, under the cir-
cumstances—a survey at once retrospective, present,
and anticipatory ! Yet all compacted together, by
the skill of M. ACHILLE FOTILD, within the narrow
compass of a few succinct paragraphs.
Supposing that our own great Master of the
Science cf Finance, the right hon. the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, were required to submit to
the scrutiny of the House of Commons in a
Committee of Ways and Means a cluster of budgets
thus portentous in the magnitude of their col-
lective scope—as surely as ever HEROD was out-
Heroded, GLADSTONE would inevitably be out-
Gladstoned. The annual speech of four or five
hours' duration would be lengthened into an ha-
rangue requiring the small hand upon the clock
confronting Mr. SPEAKER to make at the very least
the circuit of the dial. The elaborated oration
filling now, year after year, some fourteen or six-
teen columns of closely ccmpacted letterpress, would
expand in bulk to dimensions equivalent to a
thickish octavo volume or a moderately ponderous
quarto. A stray orange, by way of a parliamen-
tary lubricant, would be altogether insufficient for
the emergency—the refreshing Sevilles requiring
no doubt in such an emergency to be pro-
vided beforehand by the round dozen.
Here, again, as so frequently in other par-
ticulars they do incontestibly manage these things
better in France—according to the hackneyed
dictum of the Reverend Wag YORICE. So much
better do the French Financiers manage in the
way of epitomising their most intricate statements,
that whereas Mr. GLADSTONE requires a crowd
of columns in which to explain the nature of one
Budget in reference to the national income and
expenditure in a single twelvemonth, M, FOITLD
finds but very little more than one solitary column
sufficient within which to group together the
salient results, calculations, and estimates of three
or four Budgets linked harmoniously together!
After summing up the figures, distributed by him
with a skilled and masterly discrimination over the
years immediately past, present (as one may
say, seeing that the jour de l'an is now so close
upon us), and to come—i.e,, 1862, 1863, 1864,
—M. FoULD thus closes this his latest statement of
the actual Financial situation of the Empire : ad-
dressing these eminently gratifying words, first
of all, directly to His Majesty the EMPEROR,
and then indirectly through his Imperial
MAJESTY, to the whole French multitude,
rich and poor—"We may dismiss all idea of
the necessity of appealing to credit!" And,
as if that assurance were not sufficiently explicit
and emphatic, adding immediately thereupon—" It
is an assurance that I repeat with confidence to your
MAJESTY, and which will be welcomed with satis-
faction by the country." Doubtless. For it is an
assurance that speaks, of itself, most eloquently to
the hearts and pockets, or, as Lord BACON has it, to
"the business and bosoms," of all alike. The ex-
traordinary expenses that have weighed upon the
current year, the year just now upon the eve
of "Piring, exceptional expenses, such as those
necessitatedby the prosecution of the Mexican Ex-
pedition, have alone, the Minister argues, pre-
vented the
return of the finances of the empire at
the beginning of la"
dition. " This eesir
desirable result," however, he adds
at once, " is only ad-
maintains with
a 0 cotanarned." Beyond which, he
alone born from his
own absolute conviction, :et total of the fresh de-
which :,
ficieney within the limits
we
zis it is now em-
braced does not exceed the
rees that can be v
furnished by the floating debt, ithon debt
t that
exceeding the proportions it has
se,
eral "times
tained during the last six years." Of itself' at-
a most
satisfactory and encouraging consideration.
It is undeniable, no doubt, that in one important
particular M ACHILLE FOULD has been completely
"out" in his calculations. He himself is con-
strained to acknowledge it. Confessing as much,
however, with as good a grace as possible. Accord-
ing to the hope expressed by eatlier in this
current year, a hope still clung to with exemplary
tenacity as recently as October, the Budget of 1862
at its winding up would leave the finances
of the empire at the worst in a state of
equillibrium. If without leaving behind it
any surplus whatever, though but one of an
infinitessimal character, the Year of Grace,

_

1862, thought M. FOULD before Midsummer, in-
sisted his Excellency even after Michaelm as, would
die out at length without at any rate any result as
unsatisfactory as a positive deficit—that rankling
sting left behind it, in flitting by so many an irri-
tating Bee of a Budget.
The actual result has unhappily proved
quite otherwise. There will, the once san-
guine but now perfectly candid Financier
himself acknowledges, he found at the close of
1862 not only a deficit, but a deficit as it happens
of 35,000,000—francs ! however—not livres sterl-
ing ! Eight millions more, as the event prover than
had originally been anticipated as requisite
for the carrying out of the Mexican expedition !
Sixteen millions (again exactly double the
pro-Mexican increase) formed the supplementary
demand of the Minister of Marine, be-
yond his original estimate of the maritime re-
quirements of the year ! Eleven millions (making
up, with the last two items, the total deficit upon
the twelvemonth already specified, of 35 millions
in the aggregate) eleven millions being required for
premiums upon the exportation from France of
sugar extracted from beetroot. Like a skilled and
practised administrator, as he is, M. FOULD having
filled up an unlooked-for cup of bitterness for '
France by pouring out these dregs of the Budget
of 1852—at once endeavours to take the unpleasant
flavour away from the national palate by
his still favourable comparison of the current
financial year with its immediate predeces-
sor, viz.-1861. Making a wry face enough
over the eighty-three millions already lavished
within 1862 upon the prosecution of the War in
Mexico, M. FOULD, with the deficit of 35 millions
lying at the moment fresh before him, still confi-
dently hopes for a surplus of no less than
110,000,000 in 1863. A whispered acknowledg-
ment, however, follows hard upon the heels of this
momentarily exhilirating vaunt, that, of course,
there will, probably, follow in due time the usual
string of supplemental credits year by year autho-
rised by the Imperial Legislature! Truly—
"of course." It is a result this—judging
from the past—only perfectly en regle. And so
the confidently anticipated surplus, glowing and
ripening yonder in the distance, when approached
and culled and tasted, turns out to be no better
upon a nation's lips than the dust and ashes of a
deficit ! Financially, no less than socially and
morally—the Frenchman, like other men, "never
is but always to be blessed." And so it falls out
systematically it might almost be said, year after
year, that the nation, there upon that side of the
Channel, no less undeniably than of late years
upon this—wanders perpetually onward through a
very quagmire of deficits in quest of that brilliant
but illusory Will o' the Wisp of a surplus always
wandering away, quite within view but never within
reach yonder in the hazy distance. Nevertheless,
while it is so, undeniably, alike in France and in
England—there is, at the same time, visible to all,
upon the opposite shores of the British Channel, a
rapid and wonderful development of the resources
of the two nations, an expansion, beyond all,
denial in the scope of their commerce and of their
general enterprise, and this ever in amicable rivalry,
in sound and wholesome competition. The Finan-
cial superstructure may, to the more timorous critics,
both in France and England, appear in many
respects too aspiring and ambitious, but there in
France, no less than here in England, they are
built up for the most part, we believe, upon ,
broad and solid foundations.

It will encourage rather than check the flow
of contribution to Lancashire, to know that it
proves fairly adequate to the emergency. Sacri-
fices and efforts on the part of the generous,
which fail of their object, are apt to be given up
in despair. We cannot, therefore, doubt that the
note sounded by Mr. GLADSTONE, in his speech
at Chester on Saturi.ay last, is the one which
will cheer us all on to action during the remain-
ing winter months. At the best the distress will
be great; the greater, because distress is always
relative to position. There is reason to hope that
numerous families of the cotton operatives are
now receiving relief to an amount which, in some
agricultural districts, would be thought fair wages;
but this, to a family accustomed to live on double
or treble those wages, is felt as painful poverty.
Standing, as all contributors outside Lan-eashire
do, in the same relation to the whole community,
it seems harsh to say that the ploughman can
shift comfortably with ten or twelve shillings a
week for a family of five or six, while the cotton
spinners and weavers can barely exist on the same
pay. Such, however, is the fact. We all of us
recognise it when we have to provide for the

wants of families of the middle class and

upwards; and, in point of fact, these
operatives form one of the lower strata of the middle
classes. Curates and clerks by hundreds, we fear
we might truthfully say by thousands, have incomes
not exceeding, frequently below, the income derived

from the united wages of an entire operative family.
And then, unfortunately, these people, like most
others, spend their incomes. They spend them, too,
rather more freely than they need on generous
diet. Not required by their position to make the
appearance expected of the curate or the clerk,
and the peculiar nature of their monotonous work,
carried on in rooms of high temperature, creating
the desire or the need for stimulating and nutri-
tious diet, they spend their earnings largely in this
way. So far as our own observation and inquiries
have gone, the work-people of the cotton districts
were not remarkable for intemperance, but they
were remarkable for luxury in food. According to
their means they liked goad clothing, on Sundays
and holidays especially; also furniture worth hav-
ing in their cottages ; but what struck an observer
or inquirer most was that, in the parlance sense of
the phrase, they " lived well."

We advert thus distinctly to this fact, because
we can speak of it from personal knowledge, and
because probably few of our readers are fully
aware of it. All the kind-hearted among us,
however, will at once feel that if it cannot affect
much the standard of relief which can be afforded,
it yet reveals the sharpness of the suffering endured,
and enhances the merit of the patience with which
it is borne. It would obviously be imprudent to
raise the amount per head of relief above the ave-
rage of agricultural wages ; subscribers in agricul-
tural districts might reasonably, in that case, re-
monstrate against being called on for contributions.
It should, however, be remembered that partly the
healthiness of agricultural work does not demand
such generous living as that carried on in towns
and factories, where the conditions of life are more
enervating and depressing. But chiefly, we fear,
\ the competition for employment amongst farm la-
bourers is such as to have reduced their wages to
the smallest sum on which life and health could be
sustained. ... .
to keep up, therefore, relief of Lan-
cashire distress to thin
speakinamount is not, properly
g,
man on a level.
Placing the unemployed and the employed
unwillingly idle merely taking care that the
Shall ndot be absolutely unfit for
work when that covete
liB
blessing shall return. It
would take a long time, indeed, to convert the Lan-
cashire operative into a willing idler by relief. We
have seen a private letter from
a relieving officer's
wife, who had distributed a large 1,,,r0el of cloth-

ing among the distressed, in which she mentions
that at one of the sewing schools in which she was,
the news came that, though on reduced wages, a
mill near would reopen and employ them all. The
writer says that the girls wept and laughed by
turns, and became almost wild for joy I Let not
our readers imagine that their charity will create
idlers.

It is indeed another of the characteristics of the
North that there is a great deal of sturdy indepen-
dence and self-reliance. We do not mean that the
North, like all other parts of the kingdom, does not
furnish its full quota of those who like to live by
doing nothing, and at other's expense; and who
will even prefer semi-beggary to industry. This is
but one of the vices incident to some of all classes.
But nowhere do we meet with more persons who
are ashamed not to earn their living; with more
who will part with all they have rather than—we
do not say beg—but rather than be dependent on
freely-proffered charity. They look at the money
as if it were a kind of degradation to take it. They
hardly feel that it is theirs if they have not given
money's worth for it. We have known of a high-
born lady compelled to open a school ; liberally and
delicately patronised, she yet shed tears over the
cheque which paid her first school bill. But we
may well question whether the tear which steals
down the cheek of the unmanned cotton operative
as he receives the first money which he has not
earned is not indicative of a better, if a ruder
breeding.

Mr. GLADSTONE, with his official view of the
distress in the North, illustrates it by the loss it
causes to the revenue. On the current year he
estimates the loss at a million sterling; and the
annual rate of loss, if things continue as they now
are, at a million and a half. His computation for
us all is, roughly, that each of us spends about one-
eighth of his income in supplying the demands of
the National Exchequer. £l3 out of less than
every hundred guineas of income ! Was this
slyly let out to stimulate the popular pressure on
his money-spending Chief ? Be that as it may,
since the loss on wages is well estimated at twelve
millions, Mr. GLADSTONE would not be far out in
his calculation of the effect of the cotton famine on
his budget. It will be such as to leave us little to
hope for from the promised reductions of expendi-
ture, in the shape of reduction of taxation. More
encouraging are the two facts that in some districts
the increase of pauperism, we use the technical
term, has been arrested, and in others even con-
verted into a decrease. While, on the other hand,
the benevolence of the country does not diminish.
Only about half the amount actually raised has
been expended—that is, about £600,000 is in hand
from subscriptions, which, it is expected, will yet
reach £1,500,000. Again, the Committees were
spending £25,000 a week, but the Executive Com-
mittee was receiving, between the 6th and 20th of
this month, at the rate of £7,000 a day. With
such facts before us, we may all rejoice that we do
not contribute in vain ; we may hope that the worst
of the crisis has been reached; and with stores of
cotton accumulating—although much of it may be
" Surats"—and the prices of manufactured goods
rising, we may contemplate a considerable resump-
tion of work i❑ the spring as quite a probability.