The Sun.
London, England, 1847-09-20 00:00:00

Otriening

I OND')N, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1847.

Whatever differences of opinion may exist as to the
causes of the present disturbed state of the money
market, the want of confidence that is apparent on
every side, and the financial difficulties consequent
thereon experienced by persons of every class, trade,
and calling, there can be no doubt whatever of the
melancholy truth. Each day brings accounts of the
failure of houses that formerly enjoyed the highest
characters, and against whose solvency it would have
been considered a wanton and audacious calumny to

breathe the slightest doubt or suspicion. Within the
last few weeks we have witnessed the suspension of
payment by houses, in one of which the then Gover-
nor of the Bank of England was a partner, and in
two others directors of the Bank (one a former Go-
vernor) were concerned. Painful and melancholy as
it is to witness such occurrences, the general opi-
nion appears to be that we have not yet arrived
at the worst, and the most gloomy forebodings are
indulged in as to the future prospects of the coun-
try. It is no longer a matter of astonishment that
houses of the first respectability should have fallen.
Who can stand ? has become the question. Credit is
essential in a commercial country, and whenever that
credit is withheld, and money cannot be obtained at a
fair and reasonable rate of interest to carry on the
usual operations of the country, the results must be of
the most painful description. There must be a gene-
ral suspension of trade, a stoppage of manufacture of
every kind, thousands must be thrown out of em-
ployment, and plunged, from comparative comfort
and independence, into the deepest poverty and dis-
tress. Such is the natural and immediate conse-
quence of money becoming too dear and attaining a
value beyond that which legitimately belongs to it.
A few days since we had occasion to remark on the
resolutions of the delegates of the operative cotton-
spinners in Lancashire and the adjoining counties,
calling upon the mill-owners to stop the working of
their factories for a certain period—the operatives
desiring that the cessation of employment, which they
are too well aware has become inevitable, should take
place during a season of comparative cheapness and
plenty, and when there would be some prospect of
obtaining some other description of employment ;
those humble men, with a degree of foresight and
providence for which they are entitled to the greatest
credit, being willing to encounter a certain present
evil, in order that a more formidable calamity in
futuro may be averted. They have ascribed
the depressed state of the mauufacturing interests
to the inadequate supply of raw cotton, and the
extraordinary high prices demanded for that which
is in the market, but although that is undoubtedly
one of the causes of the present untoward state of
affairs, and the unpleasant position of the mill-
owners—and its removal is essential to the main-
tenance, we fear we should rather say the restoration,
of England's commercial supremacy and prosperity,
there is another less apparent, but no less certain
cause, viz., the high price of money which robs the
producer and creator of national wealth of his fair and
reasonable profits, in order that the capitalist may
increase his fortune, and receive twenty or thirty
per cent. for the use of his money. As there has
been a demand for a general cessation of factory
labour until matters shall have obtained a
more favourable position, so there has been
a circular issued by the Committee of the Liverpool
Stock Exchange as to the extraordinary depreciation
of railway property within the last two years, which
has been seriously aggravated by the enormous sums
that have been obtained from the shareholders and the
public, and are still sought to be raised by calls and
loans ; they—expressing the wishes of their customers,
and of all parties interested—suggest a general stop-
page of works, and that the completion of the sanc-
tioned- lines, and of the extensions of the existing
companies, should he postponed until a more propi-
tious season. It is the same cause which renders such
an appeal necessary—the unusualscarcityanhdowdeevaerr-
ness of money, that renders any speculation,
ample the return may be, sure to turn out unfavourablythe
to these by whom it was projected and carried out,
entire gain and profit being absorbed by those who
have afforded temporary accommodation, by the ad-
vance of money.

A larger and more comprehensive view was taken
at the important meeting, which was held on Sa-
turday at Newcastle-on-Tyne, of coal-owners, mer-
chants, manufacturers, ship-owners, and others inte-
rested in trade and commerce, of the real source and
origin of all these mischiefs. They went boldly to
the seat of the disease, and, instead of administering
the palliatives that might be of temporary service, but
still would leave the fatal taint in the system to
break out again and again with increased force on
each occasion, they suggested remedies by which a
radical cure might be effected, and matters restored to
a healthy state. The resolutions unanimously adopted
by the meeting state the apprehensions with which they
view the present deranged state of the monetary affairs of
the country, and the embarrassing and injurious con-
sequences which must inevitably result from any
lengthened continuance of the existing pressure on
the whole trade of the empire. They then
state that all classes are suffering from
the present unprecedentedly high rate in the
value of money, and the extreme difficulty of obtain-
ing
it for all purposes of legitimate commerce and
manufacture, and that they are apprehensive that a
continuance of the present pressure must lead

to a serious restriction of th, power of the mercantile,
mining, and manufacturing community to continue the
employment of the vast numbers of men under their
control, and they request the Chamber of Commerce to
communicate with the several Chambers of Commerce
in other towns of the kingdom, to ascertain their
views as to measures to be adopted for the general
relief of the mercantile interests. In the meantime
they have appointed a deputation to wait upon the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, " to represent to him the
importance of the subject, and to pray the Govern-
ment to take the present banking enactments into
consideration with a view to the relaxation of the same."
This is the true course to adopt ; and if that and:similar
deputations should be armed with documents expres-
sive of the general feeling of the merchants and
traders in the several districts as to the fatal conse-
quences of these measures, an effect must be produced
upon the Ministry which will lead to the speedy re-
vision of the obnoxious and injurious provisions of
these statutes.

Austria, by snatching at the shadow of danger in
Ferrara, has perilled the substance of allegiance in
Venetian Lombardy. 2Esor is illustrated afresh.
Cupidity and the greed of power have so darkened the
judgment of METTERNICH as to jeopardize by one
rash movement the obedience of the Italian provinces
awarded to the predecessor of his Imperial Master
by the Treaty of 1815. It is specious enough to
maintain that the Government of Vienna is entitled
to the confidence of the Lombardo-Venetians, be-
cause they are permitted to prosper under the bene-
ficent dispensations of the Code Napoleon—because
causeways have been constructed at Ampezzo, Fun-
stumuntz, and elsewhere—because the mallet throbs
perpetually against the marble walls of the Millanese
cathedral—because certain canals are dug in Berga-
masco, and certain bridges spanned across the " trot-
ting burnies " of Friuli. To adduce these things as
arguments for the continued subjection of the northern
population of Italy, would be to show the
gilding on the chains, or; the arabesques woven upon
the robes of slavery. Those, moreover, who insist
that the position of these portions of the Italian family
is rather enviable than otherwise, seeing that their
criminals are dealt with according to the system de-
veloped in the Code of the Emperor NAPOLEON, are
either ignorant of those judicial proceedings in the
Lombardo-Venitian territories, which have reflected
such odium upon the supreme tribunals of Vienna, or
are wilfully distorting the revelations of the last thirty
summers. It would require neither the lamentations
of PELLICO nor the impassioned appeals of GIOBEILTI
to persuade the dispassionate observer that the sys-
tem of criminal jurisprudence enforced throughout
the unfortunate districts south of Carinthia, the
Tyrol, and the Grisons, is opposed to all the natural
rights of man, and contrary to the average
forbearance of the most despotic conqueror.
That the Code Napoleon is not preserved to the Lom-
bardo-Venetians in its entirety is notorious through-
out Christendom. That the works of utility and
decoration undertaken by Austria, and executed by
its Italian subjects, are merely like the jewels hung
from the ear-tips, and the gold coin braided among
the tresses of a concubine, is recognised by every man
not blind to the blessedness of national independence.
Sismosoi, were he writing the history of his
fatherland, from the period which closes his immortal
narrative, to the demise of the Sixteenth GREGORY,
or to the protest issued by Ciaccur, the Cardinal
Legate of Ferrara, would assuredly have to delineate
the patience, and the anguish, and the aspirations, and
the valour, and the patriotism which agitated and
strengthened the resolves of a people groaning under a
confederated despotism. He would have to record the
latent eagerness with which the millions of that most
historic peninsula tarried for the opportunity which was
to arrive for their emancipation. For thirty years,
he would say, the Italian people listened for the tocsin
which was to be the knell of their thraldom ;
for thirty years they awaited the sound of that
heroic voice which was to summon them to the
acquisition of their liberty ; for thirty years they re-
mained in uncertainty as to the quarter from which
that signal should emanate. Was the sound to re-
verberate from Valtellina or Calabria, from the
towers of Mantua or the halls of Florence, from
Cherasco or from Turin, from Bologna or from Leg-
horn ? For thirty years this people pined for the
advent of their liberation ; for thirty years they con-
tinued solicitous for the voice which seemed
to be eternally hushed—the voice which was to de-

stroy the spell of the Gorgon of Despotism, which
was to free the millions of Italy from that stagnor
and rigidity into which they had been frozen by the
Medusa of Vienna. At length the tocsin sounded,
and it sounded from the chambers of the Vatican !
The stronghold of absolutism was conquered. The
sceptre which had for centuries been the talisman of
European tyranny was to break open the dungeons
of Italian patriots. The banner of the people was
unfurled upon the battlements of St. Angelo. A
new PERSEUS appeared in Rome, and, by raising the
polished buckler of the Press, and by reflecting back
upon the Austrian Medusa the horrors of the Gorgon
of Despotism, was destined to relieve the princi-
palities of the Peninsula from the bondage of the
KAISER. It was no longer a conventional conspi-
racy; it was no longer a merely local revolt of slaves

at the bidding of a younger SPARTACUS-it was the
assumption of their natural rights by a whole
people at the summons of their Sovereign.
Scarcely had these extraordinary occurrences

transpired than the Government of Austria
endeavoured to elevate again that image of
authority before which the Italians had hi-
therto bowed the head and bent the knee,
but which was already toppled from its pedestal
and ignominiously trampled in the dust. As Pius
IX. was the author of this sublime revolution, it was
immediately against the Papal territories that the sol -
diers of FERDINAND were marched. Ferrara was occu-
pied, and what was the consequence? The consequence
of that proceeding was a brilliant testimony of the
far-seeing wisdom which, with all its inferential
atrocity, is discoverable in the Prince of Machia-
velli. All who are familiar with the treatise
of the great Florentine historian will remember that
he remarks " it is good for a newly-crowned
Sovereign to have enemies." For, continues the
astute philosopher, the peril evokes the affection and
confirms the enthusiasm of his people. Pius IX. has
been assailed almost immediately upon his coronation
and it will not assuredly be denied that the occupa-
tion of Ferrara by the troopers of METTERNICH has
marvellously confirmed the enthusiasm of those popular
affections which had been already evoked by the
clemency of the Sovereign PONTIFF.
Perilous as the position of Italy is, when its mill-
tary forces are contrasted with those of the Austrian
empire, it is a consolation to reflect that the
enemy, with all its numerical and scientific pre-
ponderance, is in a state of deplorable decrepi-
tude. Its decrepitude can never withstand the
awakened vigour of a race struggling to redeem its
iamosdairesephe
nbs forces
anticipated—one
dience,an in dto
two
avenge the wrongs of a dastardly W
and tyrannous rule. General AHERNDEN may
ococluolmumn,nsaftienrtocrCosesinntrg the
Central Italy,
at Piacenza, occupying Parma, and proceeding
to Lucca by the road to Pontremoli—
the other, after passing the Po near Mantua,
proceeding through Modena, and entering Tuscany
by the road to Pistoja. Exertions yet more strenuous
may be made not merely against the territories of
Pope Pius and of the Grand Duke LEopoLD, but also
against those of King CHARLES ALBERT, the
liberal Monarch of Sardinia. All, however, will be
futile : the obedience of Venetian Lombardy is
is ripe—the fairest province of
Austriadoome t o
d —wtihe
ll
its
foundations.r Lord
MINTO has now
from it, and absolutism will be
shaken
arrived in the midst of these extraordinary changes,
and Lord PALMERSTON remains neither silent nor
inactive.

A letter from Vienna, of the 9th, in the Nuremburg
Correspondent, says "Yesterday the POPE'S Nun-
cio had a private audience of the EMPEROR, in pre-
sence of M. DE METTERNICH. Such persons as are
acquainted with diplomatic usages are aware that
such audiences take place only at grave conjunc-
tures."

The Archduke STEPHEN arrived at Buda (Hun-
gary) on the 28th ult., where he was received with
great éclat, and on the following day assumed the
functions of Lieutenant-General of the kingdom. On
the Ist inst. the Archduke presided at the opening of
the first section of the Central Hungarian Railway,