The Sun.
London, England, 1848-10-31 00:00:00

NING

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.
FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
CHRONICLE.—The London and North-Western
Company have corrected, by the letter which we in-
serted yesterday, an erratum in their financial state-
ment, as originally published. According to the
amended summary, there will be required, in order to
afford a dividend, upon their entire share capital, of
seven per cent., an advance of 7,569/., instead of
6,4241. per week 'beyond the average return of the
last half-year. It is well that the mistake has been
set right, and that the correction has emanated from
Euston-square, instead of affording a seeming triumph
to parties whose ingenuity must now be on the stretch
to pick holes in the company's statement, and to vin-
dicate their unscrupulous aspersions on railway pro-
perty. As to the effect of the variance, it can
hardly be supp6sed to influence, in any appreciable
degree, the judgment which we pronounced on
Saturday with respect to the fundamental soundness
of this company's affairs. The views which we then
expressed we still deliberately adhere to. It would
be taking st dismal view, not of railway interests
merely, but of the commercial prospects and social
advancement of this • country, to anticipate, in four
3 ears from the present time, the traffic of that great
arterial communication, which will then connect the
metropolis with the most productive districts of the
north of England, with the Irish capital, and with
the central and northern parts of Scotland—which
will be strengthened by outworks that are now felt
only as burdens, and replenished from channels which
for the present operate as drains--should fail to realise
that moderate per centage of increase which the esti-
mate of the directors has assumed. We say no :ping
of the causes which nor. operate against': all_
the material interests of the country, and saehich
every one who has faith in the vitality of, our
trade and industry must regard as transient. We
are willing to take the average returns of the
past half-year not as an exceptional, but as a fair
standard of income, and upon this datum to rest our
judgment, that, if an increased traffic of goods and
passengers to the amount of 15 per cent. upon 500 of
the best miles of railway in the kingdom shall not be
realised by the year 1852, it will betoken a decline of
wealth, and a reflux of prosperity, which must at
least be equally fatal to all other enterprises of com-
merce and investments of capital. For it is quite
obvious, upon a moment's reflection, that it is in-
correct to regard the railways in the same light as
any substantive branch of trade or business, liable to
the changes and chances which may affect it indi-
vidually, and apart from others. The prosperity
of the railways, in a country like ours, is
bound up with every species of transactions ;
it must partake in every kind of enterprise
and movement, and is involved in every
application of capital. The receipts will always
afford a most accurate barometer of the activity and
progress of the nation. They will march par/ paisu
with the public revenue; between Downing-street
and Euston-square there will be 'a common sympathy;
between shareholder and fundholder a correspondent
interest ; and therefore the dismal visions that have
been indulged in as to the total wreck and downfal
of railways, are consistent only in those who contem-
plate the subsidence, in the same " slough of despond,"
of our public credit and our commercial pre-eminence.
Whence, then, we may ask, has originated that cala-
mitous want of confidence to which the Manifesto
we are now considering has supplied so timely a
corrective ? What have been the grounds of that un-
governable panic which has lately exploded in the second
railway mania—the natural, and, by sober minds, the
not unexpected re-action of the furor of 1845 ? False
reports, erroneous calculations, and that most dan-
gerous of all instruments, misapplied statistics, have
proved, we fear, the ruin of great numbers, and have
aggravated, in no small degree, the other depressing
influences of the time. Upon two points especially
misapprehensions of the wildest nature have prevailed
—forming the basis of reasonings which have terrified
the public, and of calculations which have paralysed
the share market. It was but a week ago that the
conductor of one of the ablest publications of the day,
one which is professedly statistical, and devoted to
economical subjects, founded an elaborate and most
alarming argument upon that statement, assumed by
him to be correct, that a sum of one hundred and
thirty millions still remained to be called up to com-
plete the works sanctioned by Parliament. Yet a
summary has been prepared, and was published in
our own columns a few days later, which showed
that, instead of one hundred and thirty millions,
the total amount remaining to be called up
on existing shares, including abandoned schemes,
was less than sixty-seven, while, deducting the de-
funct and discarded projects, all of which were speci-
fied by name, the amount was reduced to about forty
millions. 'We believe that this estimate, in fact,
rather exceeds the truth. The accounts of the North-
Western have shown, that if the total capital of that
company is called up, about seven millions more will
be required from the proprietors, which, however,
will pay off a large portion of the existing debentures,
and thus really take from the market only about Si
millions more. And this, be it remembered, repre-
sents not only the capital authorised to be raised for
the North-Western line itself, but part of that of the
Buckinghamshire, the Caledonian the Shropshire
Union, arid several other subsidiary lines to which the
trunk line is a subscriber. Yet capital which stands
in this predicament has been reckoned, in the recent
calculations, twice over; once to the account of the
parent line, and once again to the subsidiary. In
like manner, the aggregate amount of share capital
and loan capital, authorised by Parliament, have
been lumped together, without regard to the fact that
as one is increased the other will be reduced. By
such processes millions have been multiplied and sta-
tistics rendered deceptive. Again, we have had,
within a recent period, an authorised publication of
the capital account of the Brighton Company. Now,
what proportion of the imaginary 130 millions does
the uncalled capital of this important line represent ?
We find that the total amount of share capital which,
after the Ist of January, 1849, the directors will be
empowered to call, is less than 100,0001.—the rest
will have been all paid up. The completion of their
whole works is estimated to require only 245,0001.
These two instances, then, in which we have accurate
and verified accounts to refer to,go some way toen
show what monstrous exaggerations will
ions of fact have been
conjured up to terrify the public mind upon one of the
two points to which we have referred, viz.,
the amount of uncalled capital required for lines
actually in progress or in present contemplation.
The other point upon which misrepresentation
has been equally rife relates to the liabilities
of the great companies in respect of their subscrip-
tions and guarantees. 'We will not disguise our
belief, that a detailed evpas6 of the affairs of all the
lines would disclose some improvident bargains, for
which the only apology is to be found in the eager-
ness of competition, or the sanguine spirit of the
time at which they were made. Let these sins be
visited on those to whom they belong. Let the com-
panies that have incurred such embarrassing obliga-
tions bear their own burdens. But let not the
discredit of some isolated transactions of this kind
taint the whole atmosphere of the Share Market,
and endanger the stability of property to which
no such drawbacks have ever attached. After the
declamations which have gone forth, the Schedule
of the North-Western Company, No. 3,
must,
we think, have surprised as much as it has
satisfied the public. The contributions of capital
by the main trunk to other lines, with all of which
it had natural affinities, even if those lines should
yield from their own traffic no more than the
modest estimate of 31 per cent., scarcely requires
an apology. Neither can the rate of the guarantees,
generally speaking, be deemed above the mark, and
even if, in some cases, they should be excepted to,
let any man cast up the figures, and compute the
onus of the liability, as it affects the value of the
shares, to a company whose total capital will be re-
presented by 27,000,000/. In making these remarks,
we have been actuated by no desire to minister to
the advantage of any class or body of men, nor do
we wish to stimulate that reaction Which will not be
permanent unless it is sober and moderate. But as
it is our deep conviction that the undue depreciation
of these investments, to which fraud and ignorance
have alike contributed, has pressed with cruel seve-
rity not upon mere speculators, for whom we should
care nothing, but upon the frugal, the industrious,
and the provident part of the community, and also
that it has affected, and is still affecting, with a cor-
responding depression, the commercial and financial
interests of the country, the evil assumes in our view,
the character of a public grievance, and we have felt
it our duty to do what in us lies to remove a perni-
cious delusion, and to bring back the public mind to
a just and rational estimate of the value and prospects
of railway property.
TIMES.—The question of the election to the Pre-
sidency of the French Republic already surpasses in
interest every other political topic in France, and the
approaching shadows of the candidates for this
supreme office have rapidly overtopped the Mountain
and the Plain. If, as may for the present be assumed,
the contest lies between Louis Napoleon and General
Cavaignac, never were two rivals more strongly con-
trasted ; the one confines his pretensions to the
visionary influence of a name, and seeks to revive in
a Republic an hereditary right of usurpation and
tyranny ; the other rests his claims on practical ser •