The Sun.
London, England, 1853-04-09 00:00:00

NATIONAL D.

TMPTION ACT.

SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.

SELLING STEEPLECIIASE of 3 sovs, each, with 20 added
Optional selling weights. Once round and a distance.
About 2 miles. (12 subs.)
Mr. Land's The Slashing Painter (40/.), lOst 91b

Mr. C. Higgins's Timothy (20/ ), 9st 111 b (Green) 1 25
The following also started :—Non()LdaelliGi
ue gr r
eh , j
en
ga
37,. )2 160
Napoleon, The Brewer, The Trojan, and 'lackeyL- 12;
12
FREE HANDICAP HURDLE RACE of 5 sovs. each, with 30
added ; orer six flights. Twice round ; about two St-
miles. (19 subs., 12 of whom did not accept.) St.
Mr. Saxon's Caurire, 10st ..................... (Archer) 1 lag
Mr. Benstead's 1.1/ahnesbury, 9st. •411) ...... (Eatwell) 2 The following also started :—Gulnare, Quickstep, 3
Ormsby, and Union Jack. ven. betting on Caurire, 4 2
to 1 agst Quickstep, sto 1 agst any other. Caurire had
nearly all the race to himself, and won, pulling hard, St.
by half a distance. Quickstep was well up with Malmes- 20
bury to the stand, where he pulled up, and did not pass St.
the post.
STAND PLATE STEEPLECHASE of 50 sov., for all horses.
15
Optional selling weights. Once round and a half.
About three miles.
Mr. Sait's Simon the Cellarer (201.), lOst (Owner) 1 10
Mr. Hodgman's Shinrone (201.), lOst (Abiett) 2 10
Mr. Hotham's Little-thought-of (201.), lOst 25

• „
_
(Lamplugh, jun.) 3 10
The following also started :—Louis the First and Peg- 110 j
top. C. Boyce weighed for Captain Scott's Victress,
but she did not go to the post. 20K

SEAMEN'S HOSPITAL SOCIETY-

The quarterly court of the Seamen's Hospital Society
—`ietiy wasi
held yesterday at the office of the society, rig v ,
H. Blyth, Esq., _
street, City; John Labouchere, Esq.,
Captainin the chair.
Dixon,
Captain
nt id
—John Wild, Esq.
Madan, Captain Nairne,
t Esq., &c. Felga e,20
It. Grant, Esq , G. Lindsay, Esq., Wm.
Captain Probyn, G. Soanes, Esq., 5
%I° Seha7b.le.enpresentof
en.of March, from which it appeared 20
annual subscriptions financial statement from the 20
legacy h the late taa.listinll.
12811 in...
17s. , dm en ,
d donations,
ds 6301. 14s. ld. ; 20
received in
petty, 71. 12s. 7d, •
expenditure for the ardwick, 550/. ; unclaimed pro- 5
_ g a total of 2,605/. 13. 7d. The 20
741/. 4s. 4d. c'" ief a balance in hand of 20,?
Prom the Ist of Jannaltolhe 31st of March there had 5
been reeseBivB7
onlbobt:radrcjan 1, 13;4'4'1'. anclzfQreign
From her Majesty's ships, 9 .:ruought hospital ship :
vessels,
merchant 20
in
Isiteceived since the 5
Now on board :—Siek, 111 ; Coriyarcraaki73- a• total of 732. 10
'2l'9olo', 340. 20
discharged since the Ist of January, stielesil. t , 1 ; fit for duty, 2;
first establishment of the hospital,
tice request of
patients, from the Ist of January to the 3141.461 i
It was announced that Mr. Labonehere at Out- 10
Mr. Cardwell, the President of the Board' of 20
ported to the committee that her Majesty's ade, luta re. 33i
desirous Of being relieved of their annual liaglZirrnest respect 10
12. Z
to the society by an immediate payment in lieu thereof,-a -
wished the committee to state what sum they would consider
,
an equivalent for the society's interest under the MeerCantile Pg
Marine Act, and also under the Merchant Seamen's Winding 2-C-
-up Act. The committee considered their interest under the Mercantile Marine Act would be 23,0001., and 4000/. under ji
the Merchant Seamen's Fund Act, and Mr. labouchere was 21
instructed to wait upon Mr. Cardwell to represent the same. 21
A resolution was passed empowering the treasurer to pur- 2
chase 10001. stock in the Three-and-a- Quarter per Cents. on 2
behalf of the society.
The reports were received and adopted, and the meeting 1
terminated by a vote of thanks to the chairman.

EUREKA.—As an instance of what has been done I,t
islirs /IA !If.; Pgureka, by lucky diggers, we may mention that one day
- st week a. party of six sold their gold, amounting t
-,, i lbs. weight, or 2,160 ounces, to Messrs. Thorne:
ke and Co., for the sum of 7,574/. Only a portion of
ld came by escort,--Geelong Advertider.
• r..
.• •
•Az`'
a a

(Frain the Times. )
Mr. Gladstone shows a full sense of what the country
expects from a grand financial operation when he says
that the ultimate aim of the Government and the key of
his Resolutions is to lay the foundation of a permanent
irredeemable 21 per cent. stock. To do that in one
way or another is the wish of all who contemplate our
huge debt with some hope of its final extinction. As
successive Chancellors of the Exchequer have reduced
terte of interest from 5 to 4 and from 4 to 3, there
was nothing very unreasonable in the hope that we may
see the rate lower still, there being no more reason why
it should stand at 3 than why it should have stood at 4.
No wonder then that this, which Mr. Gladstone calls the
key of his Resolutions, should qccupy a prominent place
in the scheme, as rumour first brought it to the commer-
cial world. The Resolutions, however, have by no means
this single object and this simple character. They raise
the interest as well as lower it ; they add to the %capital
as well as extinguish it ; they create new Annuities
and still newer Echequer Bonds ; they leave . much
to the discretion of Government, and still more to the
taste of the public ; they make it impossible to describe
in what state the Debt and the national charge may be
ten years hece ; while sweeping away a few small deno-
minations of debt, producing no inconvenience, and
scarcely known to the public at large, they introduce
novelties of the greatest magnitude, which may possibly
embrace larger portions of the National Debt. These
novelties, and this variety of operation, may or may not
be beneficial to the State or to the public creditor. We
only observe on the complexity of the scheme, the un-
certainty of its working, and the gratuitous character of 1
its innovations. We are not denying its sagacity ; time
alone can establish or confute its pretensions on that
point. We must, however, confess to a certain degree
of surprise at this invasion of the inventive, not to say
the imaginative, faculty into the regions of finance.
We may be wrong : Mr. Gladstone may be right when
he caters to the commercial appetite with such a profu-
sion of dishes ; but the public certainly expects sim plifi. St.
cation, and finds the contrary in this instance.
12 Mr. Gladstone appears to have had in his eye three
50 different tastes or exigencies. First, the views of those 161
who think we ought to extinguish the capital of the debt St:
by paying, a higher rate of interest. Secondly the 20
views of those who, looking on that capital as an rith- li
metical abstraction, hold the interest to be the
pubstan-
t
tial ingredient of the debt, ane the thing to be reduced
at any price. But inasmuch as in some cases this de-
crease of interest is to be purchased by an increase of
capital, and in others by a more convenient and nego-
tiable form of security, hence a thrrd taste is consulted
by the proposed issue of Exchequer Bonds. These
are, in fact, the three heads of the scheme, and we deny
neither their fitness to the public wants, nor the pos 40
-
sible convenience of these financial instruments to fu 25
-
ture Chancellors of the Exchequer. Supposing, as Mr. g
Gladstone appears to contemplate the operations should St.
extend to a hundred millions of stock, pretty equally 8
divided between all three operations, then we should se
gain not less than a quarter of a million per annum St.
in reduced interest, and, setting off the diminished 50
capital against the increased, we should strike off rather 25
less than three millions from the aggregate capital at 100
the end of 40 years. At the end of that period there St.
will also be the power of redemption at par, which may
or may not then prove a very great convenience and 25 An
gain to the country. Long before 1894, however, the
whole of the funds may have been embraced in the 20
working of this measure, with a corresponding de- St.
crease in the annual interest paid to the fundholders, as 15
also in the ultimate capital. As concerns the fund- 50
holders, the Chancellor of the Exchequer meets the St.
wishes of those who live on their dividends, or who 16
for other reasons, do not look far into futurity, with 16
an investment which will take away 2s. 3d. per 0
cent. from their incomes, but at any future period di
minish their capital by 171, 10s. per cent. Ile meets 20
-
the case of settlements, trustee-ships, charitable funds, 10 20
and the like, with au investment that will diminish St
their incomes ss. per cent., bat leave' the capital 101.
per cent. larger in 1894. He meets the convenience
a
of merchants, bankers, and others withsecurity
of a perfectly negotiable character, and which may
be compared to a bank-note, not payable on demand,
but instead thereof paying interest at 221 per cent. Per-
haps wr are to regard these three securities as so many
experiments or feelers on the taste and demands of the
public ; and that the glory of reducing, if
not finally
extinguishing the National Debt is to be awarded at last
to the most successful of the three financial creations.
Unwilling possibly to risk his character and his oppor-
tunity in one great experiment, Mr. Gladstone has sent
three shafts at the mark. The one that hits is to be
tried on the whole National Debt.
We certainly did regard with great apprehension the
possibility of an overwhelming number of fundholders
choosing to accept the Two-and-a-Half per Cents. at the
present loss of only ss. per cent. 'per annum, and the
ultimate gain of 101. per cent, in capital—a result which
might possibly hand over to the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer in 1894 the onerous task of redeeming at par
near 50,000,0001., added to the capital of the debt.
Mr. Gladstone has done justice to this apprehension,
though a contemporary affects to think it only a mark of ,
ignorance, or stupidity, or malice ; he accordingly con-
sents to limit the creation of these Two-and-a-Half per
Cent. Annuities to 30,000,000/., the same limitation as -
that proposed to the new Exchequer bonds. Such a
precaution may, perhaps, be superfluous, but there can St.
be no harm in it, and in case of that amount of the new 5
stock being taken, there will be time to consider the ex- St.
pediency of another issue. Supposing the experiments 20
entirely successful, and the whole of the national debt ~t;
eventually commuted into these three new securities
in equal proportions, the State would save thereby 6,
about two millions in annual interest and some 6,
thirty millions in capital. That would be a con-
siderable achievement. We confess, however, to 3,
being rather ambitious in our demands.' We had 5'
hoped that even more might be done before the 71
end of the century. The guarantees given by the reso fij
-
lutions before the house would close all prospect of more
being done in this direction, and would make Mr. Glad- ~6;
stone's name memorable for at least half a century from "
20
the simple fact that he bad monopolised its opportuni-
ties. All things considered, those opportunities are St.
great and may be greater still ;soit is not without a 5
pang that we see them all forestalled at once in one St
financial scheme, however multiform and elastic i+
may be.

St.
St
St.
St.

10
St.
25
25
St.

EPSOM STEEPECHASES. 50
GREAT METROPOLITAN STEEPLECHASE HANDICAP of 10 St.
sovs, each, with 100 added ; the second horse to save
his stake. Twice round a distance. About four 16
miles. Winners extra. The highest weight accepting St.
being under list 71b, it has been raised to that weight St.
and the others in proportion. (24 subs., 14 of whora
did not accept.) St.
Mr. Mason'; British Yeomen, 11st 71b (S. Darling, jun.) 1 50
Mr. Osborne's Ringleade-, St.
lOst 51b (Archer) 2
The following also started : Maria Day, Hero, Janus,
and Sam Hood. 50