The Sun.
London, England, 1870-05-02 00:00:00

THE SERIOUS DANGER. OF RASH FOREIGN LOANS.

The Economist fears there is some danger not of a great
foreign loan mania, but of a small one. We mean
that the mania will not be large enough to much affect the
money market, or at all hurt the countay ; but that it will
be quite big enough to injure many unwise persons who
may now lend their money to unfit foreign Governments,
and who may hereafter lose it in consequence. The
present is precisely the time in which such a calamity is
to be feared. At first sight it would be said that the
present accumulations having been made by experienced
men of business would be likely to be kept in
safe investments. But reality men of business
have a great defect as investors of spare money.
They a. e accustomed to a high rate of profit in
their business, and they cannot but look with con-
tempt on sper cent., 4i per cent. and all such rates. They
think that any old woman could make those figures,"
but that they, with their long experience of
business matters, ought to make something much
better. But if the years after panics (and
not less but more than any other, • the last
year since 1866) were examined, it would be found that
such men of business did not make more but less. They
hated small rates, and they were bold enough to attempt
new things. And it is a mistake to imagine that a
finished knowledge of one kind of trade, if confined, as in
Englishmen it is very apt to be, almost wholly to that
trade, gives any particular power of investing money well
out of that trade. The circumstances of eac species of
business are peculiar, and unless a man has some know-
ledge of more than one, or some acquaintance with prin-
ciples, or has had some previous painful experience, he
may easily be tempted into some promising but unsound
scheme, although he knows his own trade. We are far
from saying that on the whole this disposition on the part
of saving traders is an evil. On the contrary, there must
be some people to try experiments in money, and they
are the people. Theirs is, if we may so express it, the
tentative money of the country—that which takes the first
venture bad or good, and which the rest follow gradually.
What we mean is, that for a long time there has been no
such tentative money, that now there is some and that
there is a danger of its being tempted into bail foreign
loans.

INTERNATIONAL YACHT RACES. '‘.rticles of
argreement have been signed on behalf of Mr. William
Douglas, of the American schooner yacht Sappho, and
Mr. James Ashbury, of the English schooner yacht
Cambria, for three matches to be sailed by those vessels,
each for a silver cup value fifty guineas. That the first
and second match be sailed sixty miles to windward of
the starting point, and that the yachts return to the
point of departure. In case the wind should be blow-
ing off the English coast from the northward, and it were
found impracticable to start the yachts to windward, then
it shall be left to the discretion of the umpires to start
the yachts to leeward, providing they agree that a rea-
sonable probability exists of the wind continuing from the
northward. In case the yachts be started to windward,
they shall continue to make for a point that was at the
time of the start sixty miles to windward. That the
third match be sailed over a triangular course of equal
sides, twenty miles each, the yachts to be started to wind-
ward. The umpire to decide the course on the morning
of the race. That the locale of the start for each race be
left to the umpires to determine on the days appointed
for the matches to be sailed. The first match is to be
sailed on Tueseay, May 10. The whole of the matches to
come off before the 16th June.

RAILWAY REVELATIONS.—Our attention has been
called to the fact that an official, who has been for twenty
years connected with the Glasgow and South-Western,
has been dismissed on account of some letters sent by him
to one of the papers in Glasgow, commenting unfavour-
ably upon the published traffic returns of the Greenock
and Ayrshire line. We are told that some very
ctifi.,its revelations may be expected on the subject
of ti►e traffic and accounts of the company.—Railway
New.