The Sun.
London, England, 1856-12-31 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 31, nu

The remarkable year which closes to-day cannot,
we conceive, be regarded either politically, so-
cially, or commercially, with any great degree of
satisfaction. It cannot, on the contrary, but be
remembered in England as a year of great crime,
of many disasters, and of extraordinary abase
went. In whatever we may be impelled to utter
during the course of this melancholy retrospect of
1856, we are solicitous to speak of public events
solely in obedience to the dictates of a conscien-
tious truthfulness. We are anxious to slur over
nothing by means of a paltry reticence. We are
particularly desirous, in cur epitome of the prin-
cipal occurrences which have transpired during
the past twelve-months, to " set down nought it
malice ;" while at the same time, in th© course of
our resume, nothing whatever will be wilfully
extenuated.

It cannot, we do really believe, but arrest the
attention of the most superficial observer, at the
very first glance down the vista of events extend-
ing back from the end of this pre-zent month of
December to the beginning of last January, that
while 1856 has been for England nominally a
Year of Peace, it has actually been pro-
ductive in all its evil influence of the calamitous
effects usually resulting from a Time of War. It
has evolved from, the Peace, literally from, the
Peace, as from another PA).ZDOR.I.'S Box, the cus-
tomary concomitants of War—diplomatic compli-
cations, internal disorder, and financial extrava-
gance ! It has effected this simply, obviously,
notoriously, because that peace was absolutely, to
all intents and purposes, nothing more nor less
than a most Disgra.geful Oompromise. The ter-
mination of the contest with Russia, in truth,
was altogethTc so disgraceful, so discreditable, so
fraught with infamy and degradation to England
as erne among the very foremost of the reputed
-arbitrers of the Destinies of Christendom—that
it is no ma,rvei whatever to us that its fruits have
been solely the loss of blood, of treasures, and of
reputation. Turning our attention, however,
from generalities to particialaes, let us, as briefly as
possible, recapitulate the prominent ills already
complained or collectively---counting them out
painfully one by one, aZ painfully almost as though
in doing so we " dropped our blood for drachmas"
—these evil fruits of 1856 classified politically,
socially, and commercially.
First of all, then, Comrrereially— 1856 has
added, in round nurnint:,-, another 13,000,000/.
to the Conscli.s.t.ed Debt through the simple de-
vice of the financial operations of the present
Government. Accomplishing this by the funding
of Exchequer Bills tc the extent of 3,000,0001.,
and by the tegotiation of fresh loans to the tune
of INOOO,OOO/. Consols fluctuating meanwhile
from 851- to 91k—giving a rise cf just 6 per
cent.: while the oscillations in the rates of dis-
count during the year have been still more remark-
able in their way, extending from 17 as the maxi-
mum to 4JI as the minimum, 6 per cent. being at
last, for 1856, the closing minimum of the Bank
of England. Simultaneously the Railway Shares
exhibiting an extraordinary vibration—down to
21. up to 101.—the interest involved in these
shares actually representing all the while an
amount of
capital equivalent to the sum total of
the
;National Debt, namely 800,000,0001. At
the same time that the great monetary
barometer of the
funds, and the hardly less im-
portant monetary thermometer of the Share
Markets, have evidenced these astonishing vibra-
tions, oscillations, fluctuations, or whatever we
may like to call them_(significant tokens, we
cannot but regard them, of the unhealthy action
of public events upon Public Credit and Public
Enterprise, alternating between the flush of Ple-
thora and the pallor of Atrophy)—what disastrous
proofs have we not had of the morbid condition
of the mercantile system, resulting from all this,

as revealed to us in the exposure of divers now