The Sun.
London, England, 1853-04-08 00:00:00

NATIONAL DEBT REDEMPTION ACT.

( From the Times. )
We candidly confess that in our yesterday's remarks
on the rumoured Ministerial plan for dealing with the
Three per Cents. we had not fathomed the depth or
unravelled the ingenuity of Ministerial finance. Pre-
mising that it was only a rumour that we dealt with,
we described that rumour to be the offer of 21 per cent.
for 20 years, secure from further reduction, with the
equal certainty of redemption at par at the end of that
period. We believed the proposal by no means un-
favourable to the public creditor, while, supposing it to
be accepted by all holders of the stock in question, it
would save the nation at once two millions and a-half
per annum. Had it not been thought favourable to the
creditor as well as to the State, the value of Consols
would not have risen in the market as they did on
Wednesday, when this was the form and shape
rumour gave to the Ministerial announcement. The
resolutions are now before us, and we must say
that they look more like what scholars call a praxis,
or an exereitatio in finance, than a serious propo-
sition to the Legislature. If we could suppose
some student calculating, or attempting to calcu-
late, a number of equivalent securities, varied by
caprice rather than any reference to the wants of capi-
talists, we have before us the results of his morning's
Speculations, carefully preserved, as if they had cost too
much labour to be thrown into the waste-paper basket.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer offers as many as four
alternatives in return for one security, for it is substan-
tially one description that is dealt with. This is con-
trary to all the rules of prudence. It assumes for the
originator of the bargain a great part of that responsi-
bility that usually and properly attaches to the persons
to whom the bargain is propounded. The former should
leave the latter to make counter-bids, that is equivalent
offers, if he likes ; but should rest his own case on one
carefully-considered proposal. As it is the creditor will
simply examine the four proposals gratuitously placed
before him, and choose that which he thinks best. This
has already been done by the skilful calculators of the
city, and they have fixed on one of the alternatives which
will evidently carry the day :—that is, would carry the
day should the resolutions ever pass into law.
Mr. Gladstone first deals with some peculiar stocks
which answer no other purpose than to encumber the
" quotations" and perplex the uninitiated. These ought
long since to have been reduced to one description.
That is now proposed to be done, and, if the resolutions
become law, the very names of the South Sea Annuities,
&c., will cease. Their holders are summoned to accept
one of four alternatives, the last three of which are of-
fered also to all holders of Consols or 3 per Cents. Re-
duced. The four alternatives are :-1001. in money for
every 1001. stock ; or 821. 10s. of a new 31 per cent.
stock, guaranteed against reduction for 40 years ; or
1101. of a new 21 per cent. stock, with a like guarantee;
or an Exchequer bond for 1001., bearing interest at 21 per
cent. for 10 years, and 21 per cent. for 30 more. Why
this last proposition, with the inconvenient feature of
a drop in the interest after ten years, should ever
have been made, we cannot conceive, unless as a mere
feat of calculation, or on the model of the vanishing
sugar duties. The only alternative, however, worth
considering is the offer of 1101. in 2/ per Cents., guaran-.
teed till 1894. Supposing the resolutions to be adopted,
and all the holders of Three per Cents. to make this
selection, it will save the country a quarter per cent. on
the interest of about 500,000,0001. Three per Cents.,
that is, about 1,250,0001. a-year ; 1101., at 21 per Cent.,
being equivalent to 1001. at 21. So far the annual
saving to the country would be only half that to be an-
ticipated from the scheme as rumour had described it.
But, inasmuch as it is proposed to increase the nominal
capital in this alternative from 1001. to 1101., that would
be an addition of 10 per cent. to the capital subjected tf)
the process, and in the year 1894 our descendants would
have to thank us for adding about fifty millions to the
national debt.

We have no hesitation in laying it down as a principle
that, whatever we do, we are not justified in increasing
the capital of the debt. We may increase the interestas
much as we please, within reasonable limits and for a
moderate term of years ; but to make a bargain with the
national creditor, adding fifty millions to the debt, when
the children born this year shall be forty years old,
simply and solely in order to escape paying 1,250,0001.
a-year ourselves, would be nothing less than disgraceful,
and certainly most contrary to the resolute, sturdy, self-
denying spirit of our recent commercial and financial le-
gislation. It is to this point that the study of finance
should be specially directed, and whoever shall devise
some means of diminishing our fatal inheritance of debt
will indeed earn a place in the first rank of British
statesmen. Now that the great names of the last long
and glorious war are becoming historical, we may com-
plain that we of this day have no such opportunity
of distinguishing ourselves. One way, however, is_
open to those who would win a place in the memories
of that splendid era. The man who can devise a
means for paying off the debt of the war
may well rank with the statesmen who directed it and
the great captains who fought it by sea and by lancl.
It Mr. Gladstone would tell us how to extinguish the
capital of our stupendous debt by the end of this century,
that would be worth the addition of another 5,000,0001.
a-year to our present burden. His proposition, little as
we expected it from such a quarter, is quite in the other
direction. It is to spare ourselves at the expense, or at
least at the risk, of our children. Mr. Gladstone evi-
dently does not anticipate so great a preference for this
particular alternative. He gives to posterity the option
of reducing our debt by a hundred millions, that is, sup-
posing the 82/. 10s. at 34 per cent. generally accepted.
But, unfortunately, posterity is not here to make its
choice ; the choice is to be made now by living capitalists,
and they will undoubtedly select the alternative that
spares themselves at the expense of the country forty
years hence. In another part of our impression it is
suggested that the Resolutions be at once amended by
the omission of this one alternative, and we cannot but
agree that its surrender will come with more grace now
than at the end of a Parliamentary struggle.

THE GOVERNMENT BOOKSELLING CONCERNS.

In an article on the education question in the new
number of the Edinburgh Review, the writer, in reviewing
Sir James Kay Shuttleworth's new work, remarks :--
" We are glad to observe that Sir James Kay Shuttle-
worth expresses a very decided opinion on a subject
which is one of considerable importance, and which has
been much discussed. With reference to the publica-
tion and trading in school books by the Government,
Sir James Kay Shuttleworth remarks :--`lt is essential
that the Government should avoid every form of inter-
ference which could discourage individual enterprise,
the freedom of opinion, and the natural action of litera-
ture on the popular intelligence and taste, or of the trade
in books in their production and diffusion. The Govern-
ment is not an author, a holder of copyrights, a publisher
of books, nor a patron of methods ; much less is it to
interfere in the formation of opinion, by making
schools the organs of its own doctrines.' And he
adds—' I concur with the great publishing houses
of London in their objections to any sale of the
books of the Irish Commissioners in Great Britain,
except through the ordinary channels of trade.'
This is an opinion founded on sound principles. The act
of copyright creates a monopoly for the encouragement
of literature, and thus for the benefit of the public. It
never was contemplated that the Government should
buy up, or in any way hold, these monopolies. If they
hold them, they must either trade in books, and carry
on the business of booksellers in all its details, or they
must restrict the use of their works to their own schools.
In the one case they embark in a business they cannot
carry on without prejudice to the public interest ; in the
other, they deprive the public of, the books they have
every right to demand; inasmuch as they have been con-
structed at their own cost. It would, indeed, be a nar-
row and exclusive policy, little to be commended, were
the Government to use the influence they possess, to en-
courage the most able writers, free of money payment,
to write books restricted to the use of their own schools.
It cannot be supposed that any writer would, of his own
choice, restrict the circulation and utility of his writings
to a particular class of schools. On the contrary, he
should desire that they might have the widest diffusion,
thus extending the public benefit, and at the same time
securing to himself, in the most legitimate way, that
just reward which shodld result to him from a public re-
cognition of the value of his services."—Bdinburgh Re-
view.

MANAGEMENT OF THE DEAD IN THE METROPOLIS.—
The number of superficial feet in an acre is 43,560.
Hence we have merely to establish a simple rule and
say, if so many superficial feet are made to contain so

many bodies, how iiiany will 43,560 (the acre) contain ?
When we reflect that from fifteen to twenty times as
many bodies as ought to be are daily deposited in many_
receptacles, that in some examples upwards of 20,000,
in ethers beyond 50,000 have been dispose of in a single
acre of ground—that dead bodies are corrupting—within
six inches of the surface, under every variation of tempe-
rature, every change of atmosphere, from dry to moist,
from moist to dry : that myriads of dead, " piled one
upon another (according to one eye-witness), like bricks,"
are incessantly evolving many thousand times their own
bulk of the most poisonous compounds, within a few
feet of densely-crowded habitations—Lthat the very
ground is growing up around us, and houses disappear-
ing beneath masses of corruption—we are compelled
again and again to repeat that the entire system of grave
yard and vault management in this metropolis is an
enormous and scandalous iniquity, Can we wonder that
disease is engendered or life destroyed by noxious
emanations ? We make for ourselves the poison which
we breathe ; in our perverse blindness we sow decay,
and we reap death ! It is almost unnecessary for me—
indeed, it' would be impossible to enumerate the varied
injuries inflicted on the health of the living, by a prac-
tice which compels us to breathe, not the pure air of
heaven, but the poisonous compounds of our own cor-
ruption.—G. A. Walker, in Practical Suggestions for
the Establishment of National Cemetries.
PROSPECTS OF EMIGRANTS.—If the immigrant can
manage to bear up against the exorbitant rents, over-
crowding,
and general social discomfort that meet him
upon his lauding, he will not find very much else to
complain about. The absolute necessaries of life are not
very dear. The fears which we expressed some months
since respecting a scarcity of flour have subsided for the
present, in consequence of importations from various
quarters, and the prospects of tolerable harvests in this
• and the neighbouring colonies. From these causes, the
price of flour recently fell from 451. to 301. per ton,
it has further declined to 23/.—its price at the present
t
moment. Beef and mutton, tea and sugar—the staple
of colonial consumption—are reasonably cheap and
abuildant. Vegetables, fruit, eggs, butter, and so forth,
t'be classed aftiongst luxuries ; they are scarce and
dear. Men' find it far more money-making to dig for
gold than to cultiikie-hiarkei gardens-; and the digger
is content with his siitiple fare of " mutton, tea, and
damper, three times a-day."—Melbourne Argus.