The Sun.
London, England, 1841-03-06 00:00:00

the two nations, and wi l continue so until they mutually agree
to rescind the Article; for it is a principle of universal juris-
prudence, that a compact cannot be rescinded by one party
'only, if the other party does not consent to rescind it, and does
not act to destroy it."
This is conclusive.

POST.—The intelligence communicated this _morning of
the fresh shock sustained by the banking interest of the United
States, caused considerable agitation among our commercial
men. The explosion of the United States Bank, and the de-
rangement of money matters generally which followed that
event at Philadelphia and in other parts of the Union, cannot
but have a very bad effect in this country. The branch and
other banks of the'western and southern States may be expected
now, one and all, to suspend specie payments, a proceeding that
must operate greatly to the prejudice of the commercial body of
America, and of course of our own merchants and manufac-
turers. It had been hoped that the long interval of
inactivity which had been experienced in the import
trade would have been succeeded at length by one of extra.
Oidinary. prosperity. Without the necessary money accommo-
dation the importing establishments win, however, be totally
unable to run off their stocks, even should they have prow ded
themselves with supplies • but orders will doubtless be coun-
termanded where time will admit of it, although money may
have been remitted to pay for them ; and certainly nothing
that had been in preparation for export, on consignment, will
now go forward. The American community are absolutely left
Without a currency. This second break-down is another proof
of the fact for which we have over and over con'ended,
namely, that the United States cannot maintain a me-
tallic circulation simultaneously with Great Britain, so long
as they are borrowers of British capital. The shares
'of the United States Bank, which had previously been
don at NI. to 101, were to-day quoted at no snore than
51. to 61. per share. The interest our capitalists have in the
concern is believed to be about four millions out of the seven ;
yet such has been their infatuation that they have themselves
by their incessant abuse of it done even more than General
Jackson and Mr. Van Buren to reduce it to its present posi-
tion. It not thought, now that the mischief has been com-
pleted, the Bank will be deprived of its charter. Many of the
jobbers who fancied they might benefit largely by its fall, and
who bought shares at 4P to 50 dollars each, must probably—
and they will in this case be but little pitied—be ruined by
the subsequent depreciation to 26 or 27 dollars per cent.
The New York Courier and Enquirer makes the following
remarks upon the subject a the second suspension :
" We need scarcely say the intelligence that the Bank of the
United States had again suspended specie payment; caused con-
siderable sensation in the City yesterday. To us it appears to
be an event match to be deplored—not particularly on account
of its stockholders or the holders of its notes, but en account
of the deleterious effect it will have on the banking system
generally, and on American public credit abroad, and that at a
moment when both the Federal Government and the State Go-
vernments have occasion to resort to their credit on no insigni-
ficant scale.

" Of the causes which have led to the suspension we have
no doubt the moat prominent is the speculations which have
been going on here, based upon the depres-ion of the
value of the stock. There is no .o'her way of accounting
for the excessive demand on the institution for specie.
The demand for specie, on which the suspension took
place, was made by brokers in New, York at a: time when
the discount on the paper here was little or nothing more than
the expense of send ng on the notes and bringing back the
specie. Why, then, was the specie demanded ? We much
mistake if there have been any who have really a s!ake in the
general prosperity of the cointry, and who have lent their
aid to promote these stock-jobbing assaults on the Bank—we
much mistake, we say, if they d i not hare cause to deplore
their conduct, for no bank is safe against such attacks. The'
Bank has alresdy pail out in specie, since •the resumption;
nearly as much as the whole amount of specie in the vaul s
of the Balk of England ; quite as much as all the specie held
by allehe banks of this Sta'e, according to. the Comptroller's
Report, which amounted on the Ist of January last only to
5,423,122 dollars, arid yet the run on her was still conti;tued,
and not for any foreign export demand. We repeat, no
hank can . withs:and such assaults, and loelieviog„ as we
firmly do, that the welfsre of the •country has been most
materially promoted by the banking -system; we ean-•
not lout. look. with dismay on a line of conduct which
places the whole at the mercy. of stock gamblers; Take, to
illustrate our view, the State Comptroller's Report just pub-
lisped. Our banks have a circulation of rising 15,000,003
dol., and deposits to an amount rising 17,000,000 dol., and to
meet all this but, five millions and a half of specie, if specie is-
demanded. We cannot account for the really malevolent feel-
ing ev;nced by some journals at this, in our view, truly unfor-
tunate event. The Bank of the United Sta:es is certainly,
now, at least, in no way connected with partisan politics, and
why, therefore, its downfall, if downfall it should prove, should
he considered by- any except the gamblers in its stock, as a
matter of gratulation, is to us unaccountable We dread the
consequence, besides, for this city ; we fear the evil will not
stop with the United States Bank. We fear for every bank
in Philadelphia and south of that city, and then it cannot be
otherwise than that New York, wi h her commercial connec-
tions, should feel the shock, and most severely too."
. _ _

The comparison made by the writer of the preceding, of the
specie paid out by the United States Bank since the resump-
tion, mod the stock of the Bank of England, is false. The
Bank of the United States has paid, by means of drafts on
England, nearly six millions of dollars ; but the Bank of Eng-
land has in her vaults almost as many pounds. We douht,
moreover, whether there is just gniund for the supposition that
New York will suffer to the extent anticipated. his believed
by well-informed parties here, that both the New York and
Boston banks, at all events, will continue to answer their notes
in specie.
The English Funds have been supported better than was to
have been expected.

HERALD. —The financial and political news from New
York produced a considerable impression on the Stock Mar-
ket to-day. But the depth of this impression would be ill-
measured by the actual decline merely in the quotations of
stocks, for it must be remembered that the funds ware deci-
sively on the rise yesterday, and with a firm and evident ten-
dency to a greater rise still, so strong was the confidence in the
renewed pacific aspect of public affairs, to which the greater
easiness in discounts and money contributed materially.
The failure of a wholesale grocery establi,hment of some
standing in •he City, combined with various failures in Liver-
pool and other parts of the country tends rather to unsettle
credit, but in feet there has Lot been more commercial de-
rangement of this sort than what is usual and might be ex-
pected after two or three years of indifferent trade.
The accounts to-day from the United States of the third
suspension of the United States Bank, and generally that of
1 the Philadelphia Banks which had so recently resumed specie
payments, have proved the engrossing 'subject of conversation
in the City to-day. It is believed that these events will prove
the forerunners of greater commercial disasters still in the
Union, and that foreign commerce must be deeply compro-
mised, if not almost paralysed for some time to come, by
such a state of things, independent of the ruinous loss to
which merchants may be exposed from past transactions
upon which payments were at, or coming to, . maturity.
There may be some reality in these apprehensions, but if
the action of authority on the other side of the water be such
as it ought to be—that is, to leave the Dunks to find their own
level, and sink or swim according to their deserts or position, it
is more than probable the crisis would be of short duration
comparatively, and would be amply compensated by a more
steady business and a mere solid money system for the future.
This is not the first time that such an opini,n has been emitted,
for in treating of the balance sheet of the United States Bank
in the beginning of the present year in some detail, it was
then observed and proved that as, upon the Bank's own show-
ing, taken conjunctively with the ruling value of States' stocks,
of which it was and is so large a holder, it could not repay ten
shillings in the pound of the original capital to the stockholders;
the very best thing for them as for the United States was that
it should go to a liquidation at once, be wound up and cease to
be as a money institution, in which character for years past it
had worked only a most tremendous amount of mischief. It
was believed, according to the accounts now received, that the
Bank must now inevitably come to a liquidation. Th.s
el:max of misfortune or d.sgrace is no reflection or fault of
tl.e present management, which, to do it bare justice. has from
the commencement been saddled with the ungrateful task only
of endeavouring vainly to redeem the i, redeemable errors of
its predecessors. The effort has been vain. The prodigal,
vast and moon-struck dreams of Mr. Biddle, to which th
Bank had been p'etiged, and in which involved pist ail power
of withdrawal, as is now clear, left nothing for ihis successors
but a perpetual and daily struggle for existence, by all sorts of
expedi nts more or less detrimental to credit, and always leav-
in' the Bank at the mercy of any accident, or any per y en
which dependent at the moment. No position could he more
disgraceful and di-creditable for an institution profrs.irg to
have, and which ought to have, a capital of 35,000,000 dollar,
Now that, as it may be hoped the Bank is brought to a stand still
the effect will probably be all the a ore beneficial for general trade
and whatever the present loss to the stockholders, it hill per
hags be less than if the Bank had continued business,:curtailed
as a s pretensions were, and economically as the expenses bad
been properly pared doWn by the present board of management.
The bank paper syitem in America has altogether been so
resklessly managed, or rather mismanaged, it has been in the
hands almost unitersallv of such will and unprincipled specu-
lators, that, whatever the pre eot suffering of masses of indi-
viduals, it can only be a public benefit for the Union, and for
all States triding with the Union, that it should come to its
term and be altogether and for ever exploded as now and
for time past conducted. It is tolerably certain that
the banks of the south and south-nest, the delegates
of which had had a meeting to consider of resumption
and separated without a conclusion, would fol'ow on, if per-
mitted, in their career of insolvent suspension and irrespon-
sible paper system. It was doubted whether the New York
banks would be able to keep up specie payments, and in that
case the whole machinery of paper money would either be
stopped at once, or like that of Buenos Ayres, would result
in a depreciation of the paper dollar to th 4 specie value of
one-fourteenth of its nominal amount.
ri he following is g'ven as the last account of the number of
report
ts
ottfantkheatßhaonmke
taondthaehrLoead - i
la-
'the"kliA°clcdoVitotgf- tthoethUei p
eniltasttture, the number of stockholders at home and abroad wssg psi;
down ac foof o k
llsotara.:
Number
holders in England and elsewhere 1,390
Ditto Pennsylvania
Ditto United Stases elsewhere than Pa. ......

Whole nurnbm.....
************** -- - ******** -•• 4,529
These held shares as fol'ows .
Number of persons holding stock to the amount of fire
shares and under
Ditto, 10 shares and under ...................... .• . .............. 864
20 Of ... ........... 661
50 ~ .............. 732
....... .. 9e4
100 11
500 11
frtyh.at
Tthhea nlaurmgeberhoolfdpeer:soninsohstioyhlire_
stockholdersrptwo ties,,,e,i
cal a_
;3hoya whichersOio .1
is
th
thisaar pepsceoau.rn.s. .............................. . . .... BO
, ng
less than 50 shares .was 3,251. These are principally the
siding abroad, of whom 42 belong to the nobility. The valuel
of the shares owned abroad is 27,000,000 dols., and of hmaning 8,000,000 dole about 6,000,000 doll. are represented
in this city, and the remainder in Philadelphia. It is there-
fore evident that much the larger portion of the capital be
longs to foreign residents who can exercise no influence in
Philadelphia, while, on the other hand, all the capital of the
other banks is owr e I at home, where the proprietors are on the
spot to look after their own interest, and if necessa, y to do so,
even' at the sacrifice of other interests."
The prodigious amount of the value of the stock held in this
country may be estimAed from these particulars, if correct, as
it is believed they substantially are The fallowing statement
of the positioi of the Bank's affairs, taker, from the York
Herald, if it could be now wound up and its property dis-
ci* at present prices, which of course in such quantities
is
.quite out of the question,.will not be very consul ng to those
ea
naknedr,s
Circularjoint-stook
pcueffusn,taryn
dbankers i
vlhhilch
bwreorkeemmgisele dpabi
dy,
travelling agents of certain London bankers aYnd capitalists of
the Banker's Circular is understood to be the under-
hand instrument, to take set large' amounts of United States
more
ek
thSahir
asyraid
g'Seciriti-s at very high, prices; not much
United stat,B, 'lt was shown under this head, that the
year had lost Bank on its own exhibit at the beginning of the
:-e.than one ha'f of its capital.
.

We hear that the Earl of Tanker;illei sight is
rnue'l affcctee, the operatipn hie Lordship underwent a few
months La-at
uheTrilygloestomthpelestieglbyt failed.We.helicve his
eye. -
LorOsiiip b