The Sun.
London, England, 1870-04-25 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, APRIL 25, 1870.

THE RINGS AND CLIQUES OF GREAT

CITIES.

(From the Anglo-American Times,)

Those who imagined that with civilization and
education the world would progress in honesty, mo-
rality, and equity, must ere this have confessed
how grievously they have been in error. The City
of London stands convicted of being a nest of vil-
lainy. All sorts of plausible arguments, sophistry,
and legal technicalities may be used to cloak the
barefaced frauds, but their character cannot thus
be changed. Liverpool and all the other large cities
where much business is transacted are quite as bad.
New York has gained an unenviable notoriety in
this respect, though, in truth, New York is no
worse than other great commercial centres, and it
owes its celebrity, not to the amount of the frauds,
which could not for a moment bear comparison with
those of London—but to their character, and to the
outspoken denunciations of the New York press. As
regards the latter, we would wish to see the New
York journals get credit they deserve for the course
they have pursued; the more so, as it is'in striking
contrast with the London journals, and as lately
shown with those of Boston. The English frauds
equalled the frauds of all the rest of the world put
together, both in number and in the amount stolen ;
not because Englishmen were pre-eminently dis-
honest, but because they were richer, more enter-
prising, and more easily gulled. flow many of the
thieves, have suffered for the ruin they have spread
over the kingdom either in purse or even in charac-
ter? A judicious silence is maintained in the press,
and faw newspapers of influence ever touch on the
subject. The New York journals take a different
course, exposing and denouncing every fraud and
its perpetrators, in language which would quickly
bring the publishers before a court for libel if
attempted in England. That many a villainy has
been thus checkmated we feel certain, and if the
press has transgressed the limits of propriety in the
use of expletives, it has in the main been in a good
cause. Doubtless, the first result has been to give
New York a bad name ; but the truth will tell in
the end, and the course taken by the press will
eventually be found to favour the commercial re-
putation of the city. The other reason for the repu-
tstion is, that speculators involved the courts of
law in their discreditable transactions ; and thus,
by poisoning the source of justice, shocked the
world. Coupled with this is the fact that the
boldest and the biggest clique of operators made
New York their stage. The fame of FISK. and
GOULD is world wide; indeed, we doubt whether
any other two men of the Anglo-American race
have been for the past year so much discussed, and
New York gets the credit of their doings. But
whenever the veil is raised in other great cities,
and we catch a glimpse of what is going on under-
neath, we see the same proceedings in progress
though in the dark, as in New York in the full glare
of that light which the press persists in throwing
upon it. Massachusetts has lately figured in a rail-
road affair worthy of comparison with the Erie. Last
month an investigation was made into the manage-
ment of the Boston, Hartford, and Erie Railroad.
The State, through the Legislature, had advanced
large sums of money to the road, and the directors
were trustees under the mortgage. It appears that
they issued bonds beyond the legal limit, lent the
money of the Corporation to each other, making
its stock a football for speculation, kicking it back-
wards and forwards to their own profit, but to share-
holders and the public detriment. Nor were they
content with plundering those unwise persons who
took part in a speculation where the dice were
loaded, for the conspirators had .previously ar-
ranged that if any losses might by, chance occur
they should fall on the Corporation, while any
gains were to be divided by the "ring." The re-
sult was a charge against the road for $2,000,000
lost by speculating in its own stock. Several mil-
lions were extrdcted from the State, to be expended
beyond its boundaries, yet no paper in Boston un-
dertook to expose these proceedings. One journal,
however, threw itself with great energy against the
" ring," and fought it out on that line for month
after month (but it is published in Springfield),
till by hammering away, it produced the desired
effect, and the Legislature assembled after the in-
vestigation at the State House in Boston, full of
indignation against the Massachusetts Railroad
clique. Now comes the rich part of the story.
aat,ui uci cio USC ivittorititnel,
TE KOOTI, met the colonists, whose brethren,
women, and children he had been massacring in
batches. It was all their fault, who would keep fol-
lowing him up; let bygones be bygones, and let him
live peaceably at home. But as to any expression
of regret, the idea never suggested itself to the mind
of TE KOOTI or the " ring." The directors certainly
did make a cheerful confession of error, but thiswas
a mere preface to a demand for another $5,000,000
to put things straight, and there is a chance that the
sum will be voted, although the connection of the
State with this railroad has already impaired the
high credit which so justly attaches to Massachu-
setts. The brazen impudence with which the Bos-
ton clique greeted the Legislature finds a parallel in
the Messrs. GOULD and Fisx's way of meeting the
English stockholders. Turning a New York news-
paper man into a large shareholder from London
th ey pitted him against Mr. BURT, and they appeared
in the character first of the best managers the Erie
ever had; second, as anti-monopoly champions, the
frustrators of the designs of the Pennsylvania and
New York Central Railroads ; third, as thetene-
factors of the State of New York, the defenders
of the people's rights and privileges—conferring
on the State through the mighty instrument they
wielded the boon of the cheap transport. Then
they turned on the English " ring," the Jew bank-
ers, as they styled Mr. RAPHAEL and Mr. HEATH,
whom they asserted to be the pliable tools of the
great American rings, headed by VANDERBILT, and
such men. They represented themselves as suffer-
ing from the extortion of the English Committee,
which forced the holders to stamp their shares, to
pay on each a fee to carry on the war against them,
making the directors who are large shareholders in
London supply funds for their own prosecution. The
position in which Mr. BURT found himself must
must have surprised him ; but this was mere fun
to what afterwards occurred. Mr. GouLD, when
speaking before the Senate Committee, and de-
scribing the unprincipled gang Mr. BURT repre-
sented, gave an account of an interview he had had
with Mr. BURT, who exclaimed in the innocence of
his heart against the publication of that conversa-
tion, as it had been strictly private. This just
suited GOULD, as an acknowledgthent of the in-
torview, who proceeded to give his own version
of its conversation, wherein Mr. BURT was made
to describe GOULD as a paragon in railway man-
agement, and an extraordinary combination of ho-
nesty, ability, and energy. Well might the asto-
nished BURT exclaim—" I said so ? It is an unmi-
tigated falsehood !" But GOULD, nothing abashed,
or even offended, continued to show how the Eng-
lish agent hinted at himself for treasurer. If Mr.
BURT had carefully considered the form erproceedi ugs
of his opponents, he would not have been surprised at
the audacity with which they turned the tables on
him. Was he not aware that they had entrapped
the PRESIDENT of the United States into some inter-
views, and then used those interviews with a view to
endeavour to cast a stain on the character of the
foremost soldier of the Republic while occupying one
of the highest posts in the world. If they could
do that in the face of the American people, drag-
ging in the PRESIDENT'S wife, and sinking in the
vortex the character of his brother-in-law and
every man with whom they had any connection
and whoever had crossed their path, ought Dlr.

BURT to have been taken aback at a course which
could have been with positive certainty foretold?
New York, indeed, does deserve the celebrity to which
the Empire City has attained, for she has produced
the most original, the most impudent, and the grand-
est in conception of all the cliques formed against
the public. The City of Brotherly Love can, how-
ever, do a big job of quiet'swindling in its quiet own
way. They do not make the fuss in Philadelphia
over such affairs as they do in New York ; and so
a job by which $10,000,000 of good bonds held for
a public sinking fund were exchanged for worth-
less bonds to the same amount, has not been con-
sidered worthy of public discussion, and is merely
alluded to as a rumour. Nevertheless, for un-
blushing impudence, we think we might safely
back a London finance company, though it would
be hard to outdo the Erie clique. We have reached
the end of our space, or we could tell a story of a
certain association occupying fit and appropriate
quarters in Threadneedle-street, in a house named
after a celebrated bubble, which caps anything we
ever heard from America, but we will reserve it for
a future occasion.

morrow becomes punishable the day after. Nay, worse
with hair-splitting subtlety, it is to-day discovered that
the judicial decisions of yesterday and the day before were
all a mistake, and that the dealings founded thereon are to
be undone, or become punishable."

Now, this is attempting to prove too much ; and,
like all such attempts, recoils in failure against the
cause it is advanced to advocate. Men will steal
whose morals are lax, whose requirements are great,
and whose opportunities are abundant, wherever
they are placed ; and though the law ought to fur-
nish them with as few opportunities as possible,
yet, given these conditions, and men will steal
under any circumstances, if it be the poor-box they
have to rob. The Free- Trader ought to adopt the
advice given to the cobbler, "to stick to his last ;"
and it surely has enough to prove in the injurious
influence on American industry, and the barrier to
the progress of the nation of a high protective
tariff, without attempting to show that the path to
heaven is along the Free-trade track.
For weeks the House has been occupied with
the Tariff Bill, debating item by item, and in many
cases the Committee of Ways and Means have been
defeated by combinations for the protection of
various interests. While the question is being con-
sidered lobbyists swarm, reporters and manufac-
turers leave their business to hurry to Washington
in support of their special desires, and log-rolling
is the order of the day. It has not, however, been
till this week that the items of the highest moment
were reached. On Tuesday the duty on pig iron
was considered, the bill proposing $7 instead of $9
per ton. General BUTLER moved for $5, and
carried the amendment by 66 to 64 in their House,
98 being absent. The correspondent of the limes
says that the Pennsylvania members will try to
have the bill defeated if they cannot reverse this
decision when it is reported in the House from the
Committee. Then followed the duty on scrap iron,
when the proposal to alter the $8 per ton of duty
to a quarter cent per pound on cast scrap, and a
half cent on wrought scrap was lost, and General
SCHENCK'S motion for $5 a ton on cast scrap was
adopted. The Protectionists moved that the duty
on wrought scrap should be $B, then $7, but, as
both were defeated, General BUTLER proposed $5,
which met the same fate, General LOGAN'S motion
being carried of $6 by 71 to 56. Thus, the duty
on pig iron has been reduced from $9 to $5 ; upon
cast scrap from $8 to $5 ; and upon wrought scrap
from $8 to $6, which may regarded as a remark-
able Free-Trade raid on Pennsylvania, the strong-
hold of Protection.--A nglo-American Times.