The Sun.
London, England, 1869-01-13 00:00:00

" CORNERS" IN ENGLAND 6- AMERICA. the value of the shares ; be met them by a sudden
and unexpected move, by which the law limiting
the increase of capital was evaded, and the sharehol-
ders were delighted on getting largely their holdings
increased, coupled with the assurance that it was out
of the accumulated earnings expended to improve
their property. It so answered VANDERBILT'S
i Wall-street speculations that he made four or five
millions of dollars from the men who were trying
to crush him, and he raised the stock from 124 to
150. It may be true, as alleged, that the accounts
were falsified, as but two years agothe company asked
the Legislature to increase the freight and passenger
rates, as the road could not otherwise earn enough
to pay dividends, and one or the other of those decla-
rations are supposed by some to be untrue. The
course pursued by VANDERBILT may also, as alleged,
be a simple watering of the stock ; yet that the
public do not think so is clear from the great rise
in the market value of the shares. It is also un-
deniable that Commodore VANDERBILT has turned
every line he has controlled, however ill managed
and depiessed when it came into his hands into, a
prosperous concern, and these facts go far to ac-
count for the rise, although such " corners" are a
disgrace to Wall-street, as is the shameful jobbing
of which the London Stock Exchange has been
made the stage ; yet on fairly contrasting the two
we find that investors in London have been made
victims to a far greater extent, by nefarious trans-
actions, and are much more likely to be so in the
future than are the investors in New York.

(From the Anglo-American Times.)
At present a prosecution is progressing in London
against a batch of leading commercial men accused
of a swindle by which the public were robbed of
four millions sterling. At the same time an effort
is being made to reinstate in business a man just
emerged from a convict's cell, to whose " mis-
management" a sum almost as great was lost in two
or three years, causing 27 premature deaths, seven
of which were suicides. These " prominent mer-
chants" have found an able advocate in the leading
journal ; but it is one thing to " finance " in the
city of London and another to " finance " in the
city of New York. Whether the morality of Ameri-
can men of business would be proof, if the opportu-
nity offered, of cheating on the gigantic scale of
English men of business, as shown by the facts
brought out since 1865, we do not pretend to say ;
hut they never have had the opportunity, nor is it
likely that they will for many generations, for the
simple reason that they deal with a population
whose knowledge of business differs greatly from
that of the gulls upon whom the British directors
preyed. The Times has given prominence to the
Wall-street speculations in Erie and New York
Central, and urged this shameles3 manipulation
of the stock of great railway lines in the in-
terests of cliques as a proof of the insecurity
of all American investments. We do not deny
a just inference ; and we freely allow that the
impunity with which these transactions have
been accomplished, and the sight of men rolling in
wealth gained by such means, is an element of in-
security in American investment. But if there is
one thing established more than another it is the
conviction in the minds of those who have money
that no investment is absolutely safe. Some erro-
neously suppose British Consols to be so ; that is,
they believe this of a country overwhelmed with
debt, and whose whole reliance, even for the sup-
port of its home population, is foreign trade; whose
chief outlet for its energies is an Empire of
200,000,000 people, in the main hostile, and at the
other end of the earth, both outside elements of in-
security, independent of an internal revolution by
which political power is being transferred from a
narrow and property-holding class to the masses,
who hold no property at all. If the promise to pay
of a country so placed is the most secure investment
in the world, then it must be allowed that capitalists
have good reason for their timidity. Admitting
the instability of all investments, what we contend
is that on a fair view of the whole field there is no
country which offers such attractions to investors as
the United States ; and when the leading journal in
England creates distrust it most injures English capi-
talists. That it does systematically endeavour to
lessen confidence in American finance is we are sorry
to say bu t too evident. We have often alluded to
it before, and those who know the subject can
easily detect this in its columns, though covered by
a fine gloss of impartiality. Take yesterday's paper,
for instance, and the following cable news is an-
nounced :

LuNDON GAZETTE-LAST EVENING.

FOREIGN-OFFICE, JAN. 9.
The Queen has been pleased to approve of Don Urban,"
Mountjoy Aguilera as Consul-General for Spain in
London.

(From our own Correspondent.)
"Philadelphia, Jan. 6.
" The Secretary of the Treasury has made his normal
monthly statement of the public debt of the United States,
which shows its total on the Ist inst. to have been
$2,652,500,000. This is an increase during the last month
of $6,800,000.

"During the last month the Government expenditures
were in excess of the receipts about $1,600,000."
No one accuses Reuter of a partiality for Ame-
rica, nor of a leaning to the side of the party now
in power ; but this addition to the telegram was
made by him :
" The cash in the Treasury amounted on January 1 to
$111,750,000, viz., $98,750.000 in coin, and $13,000,000
currency, against $106,750,000 last month, being en in-
crease of $5,000,000."
The object was to leave in the minds of the readers
of the Times the impression that the loss to the
United States in the month was 643 millions of dol-
lars, while there was no loss at all on the previous
month if we take the coin accumulated in the Trea-
sury during the period at its value in greenbacks,
which was not even alluded to by the correspon-
dent. In the leading columns of the same number
there appears an article on the " corner" in New
York Central, of which the following is one of its
first sentences:—

" But the recurrence at short intervals of such con-
tests forces unpleasant reflections on the minds of Euro-
pean investors in securities, which, with apparent impu-
nity, can be put to the hazard of the most experimental
financing."

While heartily condemning transactions which have
done so much to damage Wall-street, adding another
to the elements of insecurity of property in the
United States, it would have been but fair in
the Times to have explained the fact that the Erio
and the New York Central are held by the two
great rival cliques, the one headed by VANDERBILT,
the other formerly led by DANIEL DREW, but now by
JAY GOULD and FISK, jun., both the same parties,
only working with VANDERBILT'S line instead of
GOULD'S line, the New York Central stock being
substituted for Erie stock. We are not aware that
the sharehelders of Erie or New York Central who
resolutely held have as yet lost. Indeed no one
knows what either line is worth, except the few who
manipulate the scrip ; but, if worthy of trust, the
directors report both properties to be in a flourish-
ing condition. To read Mr. GouLD's account of
the Erie the shareholders might shortly anticipate
large dividends, and the rise of the New York
Central was on the following announcement :

"Whereas this company has hitherto expended of its
earnings for the purpose of constructing and equipping its
road, and in the purchase of real estate and other proper-
ties, with a view to the increase of its traffic, moneys
equal in amount to eighty per cent. of the capital stock of
the company ; and whereas the. several stockholders of
the company are entitled to evidence of such expenditure,
and to reimbursement of the same at a convenient future
period."
. _

It was therefore resolved to issue certificates declar-
ing each stockholder entitled to 80 per cent. on the
proportion of the capital he held hereafter to be
converted into stock on the company being autho-
rized, and that such certificates be immediately
delivered at the Union Trust Company of New
York. The Erie got the control of the Atlantic
and Great Western, and the New York Central of
the Great Western of Canada, and both show
more inclination to gobble up the United
States than to cry Peccavi! It is evident that
these two great trunk lines are pushing for the lion's
share of the Pacific traffic, and it remains to be
seen whether the operations will eventuate in loss
to the shareholders or not. As yet, however, it is
the speculators who opposed the railway cliques
that have suffered, and not the investors in these
American properties. The proceedings, however,
of such bodies are quite as common in England, if
less audacious in their operations, as in America.
Indeed, whether they are less audacious is a ques-
tion that might be disputed. Lying prospectuses
were freely published, with good names appended,
without reserve in their statements, and although
these were mean swindles, involving awful loss and
suffering to honest investors, there were others that
flew at higher game operating on a grander scale.
We would like to know the history of the Liver-
pool and Glasgow " corner" in iron which culmi-
nated last year. It would be amusing to read a
truthful account of the speculators' operations in
the Liverpool Cotton Market, of the transactions
directed against the whole railway property of Eng-

land after breaking down the weak banks, and
making the strong ones tremble—indeed forcing

them into obtaining the passage of an Act by Parlia-
ment for their protection. The false telegrams, the

anonymous circulars from all quarters reaching
the terrified shareholders, the unblushing lies
which marked the whole course of these pro-
ceedings might be dwelt on with much advan-
tage by the Times to correct English commercial

morality without troubling itself to go to New
York for examples. The difference between the

New York and the London directors is that the

former made money for their shareholders by most
unscrupulous proceedings, and the latter ruined
them ; that the former brought in some State
judges and the State Legislature to their aid, while
with the latter precedent and law had been so well

established in England iu their favour that they
could plunder with impunity. What VANDERBILT
did in the New York Central case was to defeat by
a very artful dodge the machinations of some

4: bear" operatoro, They combined to throw down