The Sun.
London, England, 1860-02-29 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY' 29, 11360.

replied that thei 'e was no treaty ; and therefore the '
Due DE MALAR:ROFF went out of his way to declare
" that the passes of the Alps are not in our hands,
and it is in the highest degree important to us that
the key of them should remain at Turin solely ;" and
therefore the EMPEROR himself protested, in his
Milan proclamation, against the enemies of France
and Italy, who were "trying to persuade the world
that he was carrying on the war for personal am-
bition, or to aggrandise the territory of France."
Why, if Mr. KINGLAKE'S information be substan-
tally correct—and the march of events certainly
favours the supposition—then it would be difficult
to find words to express the depth of the perfidy
which the project reveals. It can hardly be a matter
of doubt but that if that pacte de fanzine had been
known to the world LOUIS NAPOLEON would have
had, not Austria alone, but probably Europe to
contend with. It was the sympathy with the
efforts of Italians to achieve their independence
which disarmed the Continent, and induced rulers,
and peoples to stand by, reluctantly and sus-
piciously indeed, but still to stand by, and await
the issue of the contest which France and Sardinia
provoked. We know now, how that sympathy has
been abused, and how ignobly the name of liberty
has been prostituted to a vulgar scheme for French
aggrandisement. What a new light is thrown
upon the negotiations of the first three months of
11859, the ambiguity and reserve of the Moniteur,
the shiftings and twistings of French diplomacy,
all tending to one grand rasult—war. Fools only,
the proverb says, are wise after the event; and the
English nation is but now awakening to the wisdom
of that attitude of vigilant neutrality which the
late Ministry assumed, and their successors have so
weakly abandoned."
For the national honour we wish Ministers well
out of this very questionable business. We believe
that they are not in fault, but somebody is, and
that somebody may yet rue the day—

" Big with the fate of Ctosar and of Rome :"

At the commencement of the late war between
France and Austria, the Austrian Government,
being unable to raise a loan, issued a certain amount
(13 millions) of inconvertible notes, through the
National Bank. At the same time the Government
decreed that the taxes should be paid in silver.
In The Sun of May 5, 1859, we pointed out that
the issue of paper money by Austria was in itself
a judicious step, but that the refusal to receive these
National Notes idpayment of taxes was a fatal mis-
take.

What, we asked, will be the effects of this unfor-
tunate error? " The immediate effect will be to
throw discredit on the National Bank notes. Go-
vernment expects the people to take money in ex-
change for their commodities which it refuses to
take itself. There will be a paper price and a silver
price for commodities. As silver is drained away
its price will rise, or, in other words, the price in
silver of all commodities will decline. The result
of this will be that the burden of taxation will be-
come insupportable, because the merchant will have
to give a larger quantity of commodities, the farmer
much more of his produce, and the working man an
increased amount of labour for the taxation money
—l. e., silver. Loans must be contracted on ruinous
terms. Commerce will be most injuriously affected.
Distress, panic, and financial difficulties of every

kind, will ensue. And for these the Austrian Go-
vernment will have itself to blame." How speedily
these predictions have been verified, all who have
watched the state of things in the Austrian domi-
nions know too well. The war with France, with
its attendant increase of taxation, was a great
evil. The weak and tyrannical system of
government is also a constant drawback on
the energies and resources of the nation. But per-
haps nothing presses so directly on the great
masses of the people, and entails so much misery,
as the bad financial system ; and of that bad inan-
cial system the issue of paper money which the Go-
vernment repudiates for taxes is the most mon-
strous and pernicious. In confirmation of this, we
beg to call the attention of our readers to a com-
munication received from Pesth, under date the
11th instant, and which appeared in the Times:—
" Agitation is rapidly spreading among all classes
in the country ; among the rich from the evident
fact that the Austrian Government will not make
concessions to the nation ; among the poor from
misery. The question of misery, indeed, threatens
soon to become of fearful magnitude. Owing to
the enormous burden of taxation imposed by the
Austrian Government, large tracts of land are left
uncultivated, and in towns the rents of houses and
lodgings have risen enormously—here in Pesth
some 60 per cent. But what causes more misery
even than taxation is the featful depreciation to
which the paper money of the Austrian Government
is sal jected. he great merchants and wealthy

nobles bore to submit to a loss of 33 per cent. on this
paper, while the lower orders, having for the most
part to make only petty purchases, are naturally
fleeced still more ; lucky are they if they do not lose
more than 40 per cent. Great, however, as is the
misery in Hungary Proper, that which prevails in
Croatia is still worse. The people there are literally
starring. The Bann, in consequence, has had to
establish what he calls a N'othlands Comite—' Com-
mittee of Misery !'—to distribute grain and other
articles to the suffering. He has addressed to the
Austrian Government a report stating that
he must have money to buy food for the
people, but the deplorable financial situa-
tion in which the Government is placed renders
compliance with his demand almost impossible."
It will be observed that the " fearful depreciation"
of the "paper money of the Austrian Government"
is here spoken of as the great cause of the misery
of the people. This depreciation is stated to be
from 33 to 40 per cent. The unhappy peasants,
therefore, find at once one-third of their
hardly-earned wages confiscated by the action of
this depreciation. The paper money, in which they
are paid, becomes less valuable by one-third than it

ought to be—i.e., food and the necessaries of life
become dearer by one third. But in addition to
this the employers of labour are injured by the
same process—" large tracts of land are left without
cultivation "—and there is less demand for the only
thing which the poor man has to sell—that is, his
labour; he can sell less labour, arid the little he
can dispose of is paid for in depreciated money.
A policy more unjust, more cruel, more suicidal,
than that adopted by Austria cannot be conceived.
And this was, in effect, the policy adopted by PEEL
in 1819, when he obliged the English people to
pay in gold the debt which had been contracted in

"depreciated" paper.
During the war, from 1797 to 1815, the English
people paidl their Lace:; in the paper money issued
under the-'authority pf Government. From 1819
to the present time the taxes are extorted from the
people in gold, or in paper convertible into a given
weight of gold. The misery endured by the peo-

ple of England has, we believe, been often as great
as that suffered at present in the Austrian do-
minions. We still endure the pressure of an unjustly
heavy debt, and we have a panic every few years
In Consequence of PEEL'S and OVERSTONE'S mone-
tary blunders. Nor let it be for a moment sup-
posed that the evils are the necessary consequences
of a paper money system. They are the consc-

quences, not of the use, but of the abuse, of paper
money. A penny postage stamp does not depre-
ciate, for it is always receivable by Government for
a pennyworth of postage tax. Did our Government
issue national bank notes, receivable for taxes, they
would never depreciate. Gold might then go in
or out of the country, and the effect would be as
innocuous as the exportation of so much iron. We
should then cease to have discounts fluctuating from
1 to 20 per cent., and the reign of panic would be
at an end.

Mr. HAWKSLEY'S plan for dealing with the
filthy old Serpentine is surely doled. There is
some satisfaction at least in that consideration.
Although much time and some moneys have been
wasted in preparing to bring that foolish plan into
operation—although in consequence •f its adoption
not one single step has yet been taken towards the
real cleansing of the river or lake of the Serpentine,
or whatever else we ought to call it (for the claim
of that—at any rate in appearance—beautiful sheet
of water to the title of either lake or river is
certainly somewhat ambiguous)—we have reason
at this moment to rejoice over the course which
has now been taken in this matter by the right
hon. gentleman the new Chief Commissioner of
Public Works. Mr. CowrEn. is adopting already

the very best means for vindicating the fact of his
own preferment—for justifying his stepfather's
selection of him to the vacant post of the
hEdileship of England, but more especially of the
metropolis. If to the course just taken by the new
Chief Commissioner in regard to the treatment of
the Serpentine, be added, with all convenient speed,
the carrying out of such public works as the build-
ing of a portion of the Thames Embankment
between the river and Whitehall-gardens—doing
this, as we took occasion to recommend the other
day, with the stones and debris of the old bridge at
Westminster, now about to be pulled to pieces and
removed ! If again Mr. COWPER resolves upon
taking measures for the speedy completion of a

great national monument like the columnar testi.

monial to Lord NELSON in Trafalgar-square,
doing so by the simple device of hasten-
ing the completion of the four colossal
granite lions for the decoration of the pediment—
we shall certainly begin to think in earnest that

the Premier has given us, in his step-son, a very
good successor even for Lord LLANOVER. At any
rate, we must allow at once, without a moment's
hesitation, that Mr. COWPER has made an admirable
commencement. He has acted in the wisest way
he possibly could have acted in reference to that
unfortunate pool or stream of the Serpentine. On
accepting the ministerial and administrative post he
now occupies, Mr. CowPER was, in reference to
this particular matter, the treatment of the Serpen-
tine, in a somewhat difficult and even, it might ap-
pear at the first blush, a rather bewildering position.
He could not very well act according to the dictates of
his own judgment. He could not treat the subject
upon his own responsibility. His predecessor had
blundered, somehow or another, to the conclusion
that this really ludicrous scheme of Mr. HAwK-
SLEY'S was, for some mysterious reasons, utterly
incomprehensible to us at the present moment, a
thing to be desiderated. Mr. FITZROY was en-
couraged, strangely enough, to arrive at this amaz-
ing conclusion by one of the greatest engineers
incontestibly that the world ever possessed—Mr.
ROBERT STEPHENSON. Acting upon the advice of
Mr. FITZROY, but still more urged on by the
persuasive recommendations of Mr. STEPHENSON,
the House of Commons adopted Mr. HAWK-
SLEY'S plan, and voted a sum of no less
than £17,000 for carrying it into execution ! This
astonishing plan, which was to leave all the filth
and all the inequalities of the Serpentine at the
bottom of that pestilential and perillous sheet of
water—restricting itself to pumping some of that
water alone out of it—carefully draining what was
pumped up, and then pouring it back again into
the dirty basin and the rest of the dirty water—
and so going on pumping and draining and pouring
back, pumping and draining and pouring back in
saclike sceculorum ! It certainly required not an
iota of the engineering skill of Mr. ROBERT STE-
PHENSON to recognise at once the absolute
absurdity of such a mode of proceeding as this.

And so we protested against Mr. HAWKSLEY'S
plan from the first as a plan utterly futile, and
at the same time utterly preposterous. We have
continued protesting against it since then at every
available opportunity. We did so the last time as
recently as forty•eight hours ago. And at length
we have the gratification to note that the argu-
ments we have endeavoured to enforce, have so far
"told" that the right hon. gentleman the Commis-
missioner of Public Works will, this afternoon,
move for a select committee to inquire thoroughly,
for once and for all, into this long-vexed question,
namely, as to the best mode of cleansing the Ser-
pentine. The names set down on the Parliamentary
paper for this committee are as follows—
some of them we cannot but think
admirably well selected :—Mr. Cowper, Lord John
Manners, Sir John Shelley, Mr. Blackburn, Sir
Morton Peto, Mr. Joseph Locke, Mr. Walter, Sir
Joseph Paxton, Lord Fermoy, Mr. Byng, Mr.
Algernon Egerton, Captain Archdall, Sir Frederick
Smith, Mr. Beach, and Sir Matthew White Ridley.
In Sir MORTON PETo, Mr. HAWKSLEY will find

the most generous advocate yet left to him, now
that his two chief supporters, Mr. FITZROY
and Mr. STEPIIENSON have both unhappily been
removed from amongst us. But no ad-
vocacy whatever, we conceire no matter
how ingenious or energetic it may be, can possibly
secure, to such a plan as Mr. HAWKSLEY'S, the
countenance of a Committee of Inquiry, such as the
one this afternoon proposed by the Chief Commis-
sioner. If the works actually commenced with a
view to the carrying out of that plan be promptly
and peremptorily put a stop to, until the report of
this Committee shall have been laid before Parlia-
ment, we shall rest perfectly contented. For
we are as firmly persuaded as we can well be
of anything that the Committee in its report will
urge upon the House of Commons the immediate
abandonment of this absurd and costly scheme of
Mr. HAWKSLEY'S—substituting for it the far
simpler, far cheaper, and perfectly effectual plan
by means of which, at the instance of Lord LLAN-
OVER, the ornamental water in St. James's-park has
been rendered perfectly safe, salubrious, and beau-
tiful. What has been done iu St. James's-park we
want to see repeated in the instance of the serpen-
tine.

We are informed that Mr. W.Fairbairn, of Man
Chester, will read his remarkable paper on iron ships to the
members and friends of the Institution of Naval Archi-
tects, on Friday morning (March 2d), at 11 a.m., at the-
Society of Arts, John-street, Adelphi, London.

SEE OF ItociusTEß.—We have authority to
state that after some hesitation Dr. Vaughan has finally
declined the Bishopric of Rochester.

The Agra Bank has declared a dividend at the
rate of 10 per cent., with a bonus of £1 per shake, being
equal to 12 per cent. for the past year.
At a meeting of the British Empire Mutual As-
surance Company yesterday the report stated the amount
of assurances now in force to be £1,723,115. The annual
income arising from premiums is £53,835., and from inte-
rest on capital invested, L 5,499.
DEATH OF THE DEAN OF LINCOLN.—For some
few days past the Very Rev. John Giffard Ward, D D.,
Dean of Lincoln, had been confined to his room from ill-
ness. On Monday last the rev. gentleman was worse, and
during the night expired. This is the second cathedral
dignitary who has died within a year.

LATEST NEWS.

The following telegraus have been received at
Mr. Reuter's office :

PARIS, FEB. 28.

The Pays and Patrie of this evening give a de-
nial to the news of an offensive and defensive
alliance between Russia and Austria,

MADRID, FEB. 27.

The Spanish squadron has bombarded Larache
and Arcilla, causing great destruction in those two
places. Some of the Spanish vessels were slightly
damaged. The Spanish loss was one man killed.
It is said that Rabatt has been also bombarded.

BELGRADE, FEB. 27.
A new Ministry has been formed as follows :
Minister of Justice
Minister of the Interior
Director of the War Department Sehujevits.
Minister of Police
Prince Milosch continues ill.

The Paris correspondent of the Times (second

edition) says :

" The fact of something positive by way of an-
swer to the repeated inquiries of Piedment as to
her position in Italy being sent on Friday last, is,
I bel;eve, beyond doubt. As I mentioned on Sun-
day, Tuscany, most people agree, is not to be an-
nexed to Piedmont ; but the Tuscan people may
choose whom they please as their ruler, with the
exception (which, doubtless, is very disinterested on
the part of France) of Prince Napoleon—l mean
the son-in-law of King Victor Emmanuel, and,
I believe, the Prince of Carignan. Modena and
Parma will, should they desire it, be annexed
to Piedmont. The Romagnas also, if it suits them
(because, af_course, absolute freedom of choice is
allowed), may, as I have said be governed by a
vicar from the family of the King of Sardinia; and
the Romagnas will have to pay a certain yearly
tribute to the Pope as Suzerain, and which may be
fixed at 3,000,000 francs, more or less, pretty much
as the Moldo-Wallachians do to the Sultan. It is
said that the King of Sardinia has accepted this
proposal for 'the settlement of the Italian ques-
tion,' and that Piedmontese troops will soon
occupy the Romagnas."

that God will bless and recompense their noble con-
duct, as the Queen blesses and will recompense
it !" The French Ambassador had given a grand
ball. The progressist press was attaking England
in violent terms. The censorship had prevented the
circulation of the Aovedades for that reason.