The Sun.
London, England, 1838-12-24 00:00:00

THE HOUSELESS POOR

BANK OF BELGIUM.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)
FURTHER PARTICULARS.
BRUSSELS, DEC. 21.—The publication of the balance-
sheet of the Bank of Belgium fully corroborates the
opinions expressed in my last communication, as to the
causes which embarrassed its affairs, and aggravated its
embarrassments into a stoppage. The paid-up capital was,
as I have already stated, 20 millions of francs (800,0001.);
and it appears that, the Bank has made advances upon the
Comptes Courants to the amount of 24 millions of francs.
Nearly two-thirds of this sum has been lent upon the stock
and credit of the various Industrial Societies (between four-
teen ;and sixteen) which have been formed under the patro-
nage. of the Bank. The term patronage has a very signifi-
eaut meaning, as it implies that the active capital of these
S•ocieties has been supplied by the Bank, and impeded its
strictly banking operations. When the stock of these Socie-
ties began to fall in value, and the Bank saw its specie gra-
dually disappearing, the Directors became alarmed, and
endeavoured to prevail on the Government to afford them
assistance. However much disposed the Government might
have been to uphold the tottering credit of the Bank, the
state of the Treasury rendered this impossible, and stoppage
was inevitable. One really feels at a loss to conceive how
Men who had advanced beyond the first rudiments of finan-
cial science could have been guilty of so grievous and dan-
gerous an error as thus to stereotype its capital.
A meeting of the creditors of the Bank (the deposit
creditors claiming about 16 millions of francs) was held on
the 19th, at which it was agreed that an appliCation should
be made to the Court of Alpeal for a suspension of pay-
ment for three months, without abridging the right of re-
ceipt. This application has been since granted. lam not
aware that the commercial code of England is so tolerant
as ours to banking delinquents. The Government has again
been appealed to by the Directors of the Bank to assist in
the liquidation of its liabilities, and at the moment at which
I write, the Ministers are deliberating upon the proposi-
tion. But Ido not think that, whatever the inclinations of
the Goyernment might be, it can acquiesce in the proposi-
tion. The Government feels, and feels most acutely too,
that the stoppage of the various Industrial Companies un-
der the wing of the Bank of Belgium, or even the tem-
porary suspension of their ordinary operations, will throw a
large number of hands out of work, at a season of the year
when they cannot be employed in other occupations.
Amongst the operative class where idleness is the imme-
diate (in your country it is the remote) cause of discontent,
and at this moment with the fate of Luxemburg and Lim-
burg quivering in the scale of diplomacy, every incidental
cause of political agitation is earnestly to be deprecated.
Neither is it impossible that the blow which this untoward
event has struck at public credit may contract the opera-
tions of other trading societies, and thereby add to the num-
bers of the unemployed, and consequently of the discon-
tented. There is, I regret to say, a numerous and in-
fluential class here, who firmly believe that this banking
enzeute originates with the King of Holland. His obstinate
Majesty, it is said, has an obvious interest in creating un-
easy feelings amongst the productive classes, in bringing
discredit upon our Ministers, and in complicating the com-
mercial with political relations of the country. Holding
nearly two-fifths of the capital of .La Societe Generale he
Possesses on absolute sway over its administration, and by
this means, it is stated, he has succeeded in making that
Bank the indirect instrument of effecting his purpose. This
statement looks very plausible, but I do not believe that
La Societe Generale would lend itself to so discreditable a
conspiracy against the nation which sustains it, even sup-
posing that the Directors were insane enough to gratuitously
raise a monetary storm which would shake their Bank to
its foundation, and to risk the chance of a discovery which
Would enlist the unequivocal hostility of the country against
it. There are many ways by which the indignant public
would punish such anti-national and factious conduct
otherwise 'ban by boisterous murmurs or burning maul-
festoes. The public, the commercial public, is now acutely.
Alive to the necessity of organizing a Bank, the constitu-
tion of which will he radically different from that of the
Bank of Belgium, and thus avoid the gross errors, which
have overthrown that establishment. Many intelligent
citizens and merchants with whom I have conversed upon
this all-absorbing topic, are desirous of enlisting English
capital and experience in constructing a new igianking insti-
tution, and I trust that some enterprising i-Adividuals from
England will soon lend their aid to egtis important un-
dertaking. Banking here is liter4.lly in its infancy,
Its rudimental rules are unknown. And what a field awaits
the exertions of a powerful and w,ell-organising joint-stock
bank ? Its population exceeding four millions, every
branch of industry advancing with a lion pace, railroads
nearly completed for come-Aging the sea and the Scheldt,
with the Rhine. The Ge.einan and Swiss markets open to
the produce of Belgir,,, and the prospect of a transit
trade, of the value of which it is impossible to form a cor-
rect estimate, form 'sources of income which no other coun-
tries of Europe c,an boast of. The only bank of any im-
Pn'enance that o,ecupies this extensive field is La Societe Co_
-tale, two-r.iftbs of whose capital are invested in. land,
tid which ha-the delinquent bank, taken a vast num-
ber...., like
of t
Hens
ras',ing companies under its patrorlage (a very omi-
sailt.s wor7a in the banking phraseology of Belgium). It is
tits' at present
thist bank is discounting scarcely any
8. This, with the .)Pagn of the Banque de Belgique,
Arid uces a very extraorditiary gene in the muneraire.

DECEMBER 22.
Some important particulars have transpired in the course
of to-day. M. Broukere, the Governor of the Banque do
Belgique, has resigned his office. A Commissioner has
to el* appointed, with the approbation of the Government,
th i"estigate and report upon the assets and liabilities of
Wank. The notes in circulation have been reduced
even millions to about three millions of francs, in
sequence of the bank haring agreed to receive one-half
f.„.its own paper (bank-notes) in payment upon the bills
„4"ig due. 'The Government has not decided
1,-P" making- any advance, and I should appre-
..e
0:4 that they will not venture upon such a step in
Present state of the Treasury, and the lowering aspect
of the political horizon.
I have heard, with great satisfaction, that there is now a
certain prospect of a
powerful Joint-stock Bank being
redily established hereto take the place of the Bank of
bselgium, a heavy subscription list, containing the names of
any well-knor.vn English and Belgian capitalists has been
f.:;arisniitted to the Government in support of a requisition
Which
rim I was not aware had been some time before the Go-
tcent. The administration, it is said, is to be confided
an English Governor, a Belgian Vice-Governor, three

TO THE EDITOR OF TIIE SUN.
saw in your Paper of yesterday, a paragraph of
meeting being held at the Mansion-house, of the Com-
mittee for the Institution of the Houseless Poor ; when it
appeared there was no necessity at present for opening. the
Asylum. Ultimately it was agreed that a general meeting
of the subscribers should be held in January, when a report
would be submitted for their consideration—a very whole-
some resolution.
It appears in the paragraph, that a member strongly
censured the mode in which the charity is managed (a child
cf his own rearing !), as tending, by indiscriminate admis.
:glen into the Asylum of persons labouring under disease,
and of disreputable character, to spread abroad evils both
physical and moral, and attracting to the City, from all
quarters of the metropolis, and even from distant parts of
the kingdom, the idle and dissolute, who thus had their
wants supplied, without reference to their real condition.
I trust the member will excuse me when I say I con-
sider he is as well acquainted with human nature as most
men ; and how was it he did not foresee this train of evils
cf which he now complains ? They all come as a matter of
course, which one would have thought every person who
gave a thought on the subject must have foreseen ; and if
the Institution WAS not prepared to provide an asylum for
the diseased and dissolute, they never ought to have opened
the Asylum. I ask, does not the very name of the Insti-
tution—Refuge for the Houseless Poor—invite all classes
of the houseless, from all parts of the metropolis and vici.
nity, to come to it ? And then, if those who are diseased
and dissolute, with loss of character, are to be excluded
(who, of all persons in existence, stand most in need of
sightly shelter), the Institution would be a mere mockery-
an common humanity. If the Committee have undertaken
a task they cannot accomplish, they had better not open
tie Asylum any more ; for if they reject the diseased and
viissolute, after inviting them to their Asylum, and throw
them helpless into the. streets, it will be an act of the
greatest inhumanity and injustice ; inasmuch as they must
either perish in the streets, or he thrown a burden on the
inhabitants of the parish of St. Luke, which is already suffi-
ciently burdened with their own poor—their workhouse
made a general hospital for all the most destitute houseless
of the metropolis, &c., to spread disease and immorality
throughout their establishment ! Is there any benevolence
or justice doing?
in so I think not. But such would be
the result ; which I know from past experience. I am
happy to say the rate-payers of St. Luke's parish are as
charitable, and as much disposed to treat their poor with
kindness, as any parish ; at the same time it behoves them
to protect themselves against an influx of foreign poor, in
justice to themselves and their own poor.
I willingly give the Committee of the Houseless Asylum
every credit for their benevolent intention ; at the same
time, if the evils which press on them are so great and
numerous—which they did not foresee, and cannot sur-
mount—l earnestly recommend them to close their esta-
blishment ; for, if carried on by half-measures, they do a
great injustice to many, in different ways, which had much
better be avoided.—Your's respectfully.
Banner-street, Dec. 22. A Guardian of the Poor