The Sun.
London, England, 1854-11-24 00:00:00

LIEUTENANT PERRY.

The letter just published from Mr. Perry, describing
the investment he had contemplated of the funds lately
subscribed as a testimonial to him, will cause the contri-
butors to feel great satisfaction that his draught was
net honoured, and that the amount is still safe. There
is nothing iu this communication discreditable to Mr.
Perry, but it shows that, so far as his pecuniary
interests are concerned, he has fallen in with
advisers who might expeditiously ruin any man
inexperienced in financial affairs. It appears that
he was desirous of placing the sum subscribed for
him, together with the proceeds of his commission,
amounting together to 2,0001., in an undertaking called
the Galveston, Houston, and Henderson Railway, realis-
ing, according to the representations of a friend, "a
partner in one of the first banking-houses in Paris," an
annual return of from 6to 8 per cent. The Paris banker
may have had the best intentions, but, if Mr. Perry has
gained any solid information about the scheme in ques-
tion, it will be new not only to the capitalists gene-
rally of London and Paris, but also to those of New
York. In a careful map published last year by the
editor of the American Railroad Journal of all the
railways is the United States, the line in question
was not marked even as having been projected, and
from the advices received month after month since that
date, showing a ruinous fall in every description of rail-
way investment, the public are in a position to judge
`how far any proposals for a long line in Texas are likely
to have been entertained. At present any person desi•
room of investing in American railroads may purchase
stocks or bonds of the oldest and best conducted
companies at prices that will not only yield 6 or 8
per cent., but from 10 to 20 per cent. This depreciation
has resulted from tke nsalversations of the most promi-
nent persons in that department of enterprise, and the
discovery that for years past dividends have been de-
clared in a vast number of instances without any re-
formist, to the cost of working or maintenance, the
funds for such distributions being regularly derived
from the unlimited issue of mortgage bonds, until the
war rendered them unsaleable in England or on the con-
tinent. Under these circumstances an announcement of
an intended purchase of Poyais bonds would not seem
more extraordinary than that of shares in a Texan rail-
way. The financial history of Texas, from its first sepa-
ration front Mexico and its subsequent annexation to the
American Union, has been one of notorious default,
and her territory in the first instance was peopled
largely, net only by planters and their slaves
from the repudiating States of Arkansas and Mis-
sissippi, but by a large number of persons who had found
it expedient, for other reasons than inclination, to depart
even from those communities. That the country is in a
certain sense becoming rapidly prosperous is, of course,
an inevitable consequence of American energy, but to
the European world the chief advice,* of its existence
still come in the shape of border conflicts with the
Mexicans ; and it may be apprehended that if Mr.
Perry, a month after making the proposed investment,
were to change his mind and wish his money back, he
would find that, whether he might offer his 2,0001. stock
on this side, or on the Exchanges of Boston, New
York, and Philadelphia, he would not meet with an in-
dividual who would be willing to buy it of him at a
shilling in the pound.—Times City Article.