The Sun.
London, England, 1870-01-20 00:00:00

Total
Certified by the Senator-Governor of the Bank
of Erna.

(Signed) R OULAND.

The Bank Returns•

Tho Bankers' Magazine furnishes the returns of the cir
culation of the public and joint-stock banks in England
and Wales for the four weeks ending the 4th of Dec.
These returns, combined with the circulation of the Scotch
and Irish banks for the same period, and the average cir-
culation of the Bank of England for the four weeks ended
the Ist of Dec. (the nearest date furnished by their
returns), will give the following results of the circulation
of notes in the United Kingdom when compared with the
previous month :

Nov. 6, Dec; 4,
-------93,940,94; 23,181,1;
069. 1869. Increase. Decrease.
411,1-40. 759'757
Bank of England
Private Banks . . 2,855.44,' 2,751,719 _ 133,721
Joint-stock Banks 0.,125,072 2,3 ,8,739 _ 56,333
Total in England 29,251,459 18.301,648 918,411
Scotland —
Ireland 27,017
...----- ----- ---__.
74,838711,13880 75,15847,416538 _
United Kingdom. 41,503,957' 40,943,2691 416,140 976,823

And as compared with the month ending the sth of
Dec., 1868, the above returns show a decrease of
£363,505 in the circulation of notes in England, and an
increase of £105,946 in the circulation of the United
Kingdom.
On comparing the above with the fixed issues of the
several banks the following is the state of the circulation:—
The English private banks are below their

fixed issue ... £1,290,907
The English joint-stock banks are below their

flied 'issue

5G9,901

Total below fixed issue in England £l-660,808
The Scotch banks are above their fixed issue... 2 538187
The Irish banks are above their fixed issue ... 992,669
The average stock of bullion held by the Bank of Eng-
land iu both departments during the month ending Ist
of Nov was £18,443,206, being a decrease of £388,284,
as compared with the previous month, and a decrease of
£71,692 when compared with the same period last year.
The following are the amounts of specie held by the
Scotch and Irish banks during the mouth. ending the 6th
of Nov.:—

Gold and silver held by the Scotch banks £3,776179
Gold and silver held by the Irish banks 2,744,884

£5,924,651
being au increase of £518,118 as 80Mparad with the pre-
vious return, awl an increase of £321,393 when compared
with the corresponding period last year

LITERATURE.

The Statesman's Year 13uolc—For 1870. By
Frederick Martin. Seventh AnumtiPublicatiou.

Macmillan and Co.

If not as tersely spoken of among the number of
our national institutions as a Murray or a Brad-
shaw—Martin's Statesman's Year Book has long
since come to be quite as much of a necessity
amongst us as Kelly's Post Office London and Pro-
vincial Directories. Originated by Mr. Frederick
Martin seven years ago, when we referred to it in
these columns as a manual that had long been
very desirable, but the like of which had never
before been published, " The Statesman's Year
Book " has ever since then been industriously
edited year after year by the same skilled
compiler and annotator. The careful attentioa
he has all along paid to the task of its revision
has resulted, during all these seven years, in
a steady and appreciable improvement. It has led
to a far greater accuracy than was at first in any
way practicable. It has hardly rendered the
work more comprehensive in its character, for
at the very outset it was all-embracing. It
has all along been in the nature and design of it a
very microcosm. Divided into two parts, it takes
the survey of both hemispheres. Part One is devoted
exclusively to the States of Europe—Part Two to
the States of America, Africa, Asia, and Australia.
The European division is taken alphabetically—con-
sidering as it does in sequence, Austria, Belgium,
Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain,
Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Rus-
sia, Spain, Sweden and Norway, Switzerland,
and Turkey. Under the head of Germany there
are twin sub-divisions—namely, the Confederate
States of North Germany, and the non-Confede-
rate States of South Germany. The former in-
cluding
no less than twenty-one, led off by Prussia
and Saxony. The latter no more than five—those
five being Bavaria,Wurtemberg, Baden, Hesse, and
Lichtenstein. Under the head of Italy, besides the
very recently created kingdom, so called, a king-
dom made up by the amalgamation together of
Piedmont, Lombardy, Venetia, Tuscany, Parma,
Modena, Romagna, Umbria and the Marches,
Naples and Sicily—there is a separate portion de-
voted, as a not unreasonable matter of course, to the
consideration of the oldest Sovereignty by far in
all Christendom—namely, that of the Papa Re or
the Pontificate. Compared with the Papacy—as
Lord Macaulay has shown in words of burning
eloquence, every assertion conveyed through
which history to the full corroborates—the
oldest sovereignties in Europe dwindle into
mushroom Powers of yesterday. That it is so, any-
one may see for himself, at a glance, by turning to
the unanswerable statistics here brought together
in the " Statesman's Year Book." It is there de-
monstrated with " the inexorable logic of facts" that
for upwards of a thousand years a Sovereign Pontiff
has been seated upon his throne. His present Holi-
ness is the 257th Pope numbered in ss queuce from
St. Peter down to himself. According i o Mr. Mar-
tin's tabular arrangement of the last 165 Pontiffs—
Stephen 111. (the 95th Pope on the aggregate list)
was raised to the Pontificate in 752—having rho
temporal power recognised, as in his sway, three
years later, namely, in 755, when Pepin, King of
the Franks, bestowed upon him the Exarchate of
the Ravenna, which was afterwards further enhanced
1 by the granting to the Pontiff of Perugia and Spo-
leto by ,the Emperor Charlemagne. The Papal
possessions were afterwards enhanced by the
Kaiser Heinrich lll.'s bestowal, in 1053, of Bene-
vento, with the surrounding territory; by the
Marchioness Matilda of Tuscany's bequest to the
Holy See, in 1102, of the provinces known as the
Patrimony of St. Peter ; by the absorption into
the Papal dominions, in 1296, of Forli and the
rest of the Romagna, and, in 1364, of
Bologna and its environs—Rome itself and
Sabina being absolutely under the Ponti-
fical authority. It is curious to note, as in-
dicative of the fact, that the proposed dogmatic
definition of Papal Infallibility is no creation of a
new article of belief, that—it is hers mentioned as
a simple matter of fact by Mr. Frederick Martin,
at page 316, under the head of Ecclesiastical
Orgauization—" The Sovereign Pontiff is the
absolute and irresponsible ruler of the Roman
Catholic Church. His judgmonts are held to be
infallible, and there is no appeal against his decrees."
That has been the case hitherto. That will still
continue to be the case hereafter. All that it is
now proposed shall be done by the (Ecumenical
Council now sitting is—that the dogma already,
and all along, in existence in the Roman Catholic
Church, shall now, for the first time, be
defined, and formally declared. A copious
Index, alphabetically arranged, places everything
in the book immediately within reach of the reader
consulting it in search of no matter what apropos
information. It is an indispensable accessory to the
writing-table of every politician and merchant in
the three kingdoms.