The Sun.
London, England, 1859-12-13 00:00:00

CRYSTAL PALACE COMPANY.

The report of the directors of this company states
that the gross income during the 12 months ending
31st Oct. last amounted to £134,068, and the expen-
diture to £88,753, leaving a balance of £45,315.
The net earnings for the preceding 12 months
amounted to £35,074, showing an increase of
£10,241, which it appears arose almost entirely
from the reductions made in the charges against
revenue for the year, excluding the receipts and
expenditure connected with the Handel festivals
from both accounts ; it would be seen that while
the charges for the year ending April 30, 1858, were
Vi 2,890, for the past year they have been but
£65,362, and even this latter sum included many

items of expenditure which represented permanent
additions and improvements to the Palace, and
which might legitimately have been charged to
capital. The sum now available for division
amounted, with the reserve brought forward, to
£57,940, which the directors proposed to apportion
as follows :—To the payment of preference dividend
and interest on debenture stock for the year,
£26,663 ; to the payment of a dividend on the ordi-
nary shares of 2s. per share, amounting to £20,059,
leaving a reserve of £11,218 to be carried forward
to the next year's account. Since the last meeting
the whole of the debenture stock had been allotted.
The balance of the purchase money for the land,
£64,231, which under the original agreement with
Mr. Schuster became due on July 31, 1859, had,
been paid, and the property conveyed to the com-
pany as their freehold. Only one item was added
to the capital account, a sum of £3,500, paid to the
refreshment contractors for additions made to the
plant. In the refreshment department careful atten-
tion had been paid to the wants of the masses of the
public ; and at the same time the demand for accom-
modation for more private refreshments had been so
great as to render necessary the construction of addi-
tional dining-rooms in the tower of the south wing.
The total number of visitors dining the period was
1,384,163, being an increase of 20,000 on the
average of the four preceding years. The exhi-
bitors department continued to show steady pro-
gress. The increased accommodation had produced
the result anticipated, the rental from this source
having shown a satisfactory advance of more than
15 per cent, on that of the preceding twelve
months. The whole exterior of the main building
had been repainted, and its stability fully main-
tained. An agreement had been entered into be-
tween the company and the council of the London
Rifle Brigade, by which a portion of the grounds
at the lower end of the park was appropriated to
the Brigade as a practise ground. The spot chosen
had received the sanction of the Government in-
spector, and all the expenditure requisite to fit it
for the purpose in view was to be defrayed by the
Brigade; while, on the other hand, the directors
had reduced the price of admission to all the mem-
bers of the brigade when in uniform. Arrange-
ments of .a similar nature were in progress with
other metropolitan corps' and thus the Palace
would become identified with this important
popular movement. The construction of the Vic-
toria station and of the line for connecting the
West:end Railway thereto, was proceeding rapidly,
and there was every prospect of their being opened
early in the coming summer. This direct commu-
nication with the centre of the west-end of town
could not fail to cause an important addition to
the traffic to the Palace. The houses which
the company were erecting on their property in
Dulwich-wood were approaching completion. As
the Crystal Palace was now fitted up with the most
complete and extensive orchestra in the world,
obtained at a cost of nearly £7,000 (tho whole of
which had been paid out of revenue), and as the
great transept was an equally unrivalled locality,
the board, in con unction with the committee of the
society, had under their consideration the establish-
ment of periodical musical festivals, equal at least
in extent to the Handel Festival. It was proposed
that the first of these should take place in 1862.
The Crystal Palace Art Union was very successful
during its first season, and there was every prospect
of a considerable increase in its operations for the
coming year. A resolution would be submitted to
the proprietors empowering the directors to con-
solidate the shares, both ordinary and preference,
into stock.
The capital account showed that £1,459,444 had
been received, and £1,353,107 expended, leaving a
balance of £106,337.

LONDON GENERAL. OMNIBUS COMPANY.
The report of the directors states that the expendi-
ture on capital account during the half•year ending
the 3d of July last was £7,619, principally for horses
and new stables. The revenue account showed a
profit of £13,746 after providing for all the ordi-
nary expenses of the service ; eight three-horse
omnibuses and 17 two-horse omnibuses, valued
at about £3,000, had been constructed during the
six months, and charged against revenue. At
the chief office a reduction equal to £6OO per
annum ha 3 been effected by the amalgamation
of the offices of secretary and cashier, £6OO
had been saved by a reduction in the cost of the
district management, and £550 in a portion of

the staff, making a total reduction of £1,750 per
annum. The annual economy elketed since the Ist
January la.it amounted to 740 viz., Xl,OOO in
the discontinuance of the Chelsea—
depot, £1,500 by
the correspondence system, 'X2,990 reduction in
staff and expenses of Paris office, £6OO in chief
office staff in London, £5OO in district manage-
ment, £550 in out-door staff, and £5OO discontinu-
ance of insurance. The horse stock was in excel-
lent condition. The directors had;for the more con-
venient despatch of business, appointed from their
number an executive committee consisting of the
chairman and three members of the board. The
direkors had invited .Messrs. It. Sedgwick and H.
B. K. Kent, two shareholders of the company, to
act as auditors, subject to the approval of the pro-
prietors. The directors would submit a resolution
authorising them to cancel the 25,192 shares re-
maining unissued,, representing £100,708 of capi-
tal, and thereby closing the share capital account
of the company, and in lieu thereof to raise by loan,
debenture, or preference shares, as most expedient,
a sum of £30,000 in addition to the existing
bankers' loan, and if found expedient to replace the
present bankers' loan by funds raised on debentures
or preference shares. The balance which would
still exist against the capital account would be gra-
dually liquidated. the directors feeling that it was
of vital importance that the amount of the capital
of the company should be as limited as possible,
and hoped, by these means, ultimately to bring it
within £600,000, and close it at that sum.

21. GIRA.RDIN ON ME STATE OF

EUROPE.

(A'enetfirs- -21erhtr1 aris Corresponilenf.)

r M. Emile Girardin's brochure, 1' Emperor Napo-
leon 111. et 1' _Europe, has at last appeared. The im-
pression was seized at the printer's on the 13th of
November, the day before its intended publication,
on the warrant of the Juge d'lnstruction. The
legality of this premature seizure was contested on
the ground that the alleged offence to the person of
the Emperor, and the excitement of hatred, &c., to
his Government, was not completed by publicity, as
required by the 128th clause of the Code of Crimi-
nal Instruction. The point was allo wed, the brochure
was restored to the printer, and was forthwith pub-
lished, with the exception of some passages which
might be construed into offence to the Emperor, and
which were omitted.

That any object should be agitated in public, from
the minutest to the most important. from a choux
monstre or the Diners de Paris to the organisation
of Italy and the settlement of Europe, without M.
Girardin's interposition, and without his attempting
to show that all the world, past and present, have
been wrong, and he only right, was not to be con-
ceived.

In the present production the ex-journalist
affirms that nothing decisive has as yet been done
by any one on any one of the great questions which
aiplomacy and the sword have tried to resolve. He
declares that, of the five great Powers of Europe,
France is the only country that has no foreign po-
licy worth talking of:—
" Externally England has a policy—to find
markets for her produce.
." Externally Austria has a policy—to draw
closer together and augment her bundle of States.
" Externally Prussia has a policy—to counter-
balance Austria.

" Externally Russia has a policy—to execute the
testament of Peter the Great.

" If the author of this work is in. error, let his
contradictors inform him what is the external po-
licy of France."
lie asserts that even the First Napoleon had no
policy, and, after sketching the vast extent and
power of the first Empire, observes :
" To have a policy is to have an object in view.
Not to have this object is not to have a policy. Na-
poleon I. conquered merely, to conquer. Had not
this Wandering Jew of victory been stopped by
the burning of Moscow and the premature se-
verity of the season, he would have continued to
march till he encountered a defeat or death. if he
had had an external policy which he could explain
to himself he would not have concealed it; on the
contrary, he would have disclosed it in one of those
memorable bulletins, in order to reassure those
whom the unknown frightened, and when it would
have closely bound to his cause kings and peoples,
which the community of interests would hare drawn
to him."

He then enters on the more delicate inquiry as to
whether Napoleon HI. has, after all, an external
policy :
" The Emperor Napoleon III.," he says, " has
laudable political inspirations ;:it would be unjust to
deny the fact. But the policy into which he has
entered is a labyrinth from which it is very difficult
to issue without a conducting thread."
He sets in proof of this the two expeditions to
Italy-1849 and 1859—the one being the contradic-
tion of the other. He conthlmns the Crimean war,
which, though glorious for the French arms, was a
political fault, because Napoleon 111. was not the
man who should defend the map of Europe as ar-
ranged by the treaties of 1815; " and," he asks,
did it become France to weaken the maritime power
of Russia and arrest her development ?"
" In the maritime equilibrium less important than
the territorial? Is England, whose interests we
serve when we weaken a naval Power, an ally to
be relied upon ? Admitting that she is, of what
use is she to us ? What service did she render us
in the Italian expedition, when, nevertheless, all
the sympathies of the old and natural ally of
Austria should be for the deliverance of the Ita-
lians ? Do I mean that France ought to treat
England as an enemy ? No. With England the
conduct of France ought to he this :—No rash de-
fiances, no offensive manner of proceeding, but no
concessions without reciprocity—no weakness to
encourage her audacious promptness of encroach-
ment. No humility to arm her pride, which is
easily exalted. England, like a river which
always tends to overflow, requires to be ever
kept within bounds. Every concession without an
equivalent is a danger ; it is a fault, for England
esteems only those whom she insults—that is to say,
those who resist her. Do I mean that France ought
to render serious the visible apprehensions of Eng-
land? No, even if a landing on her coast succeeded
it would prove nothing, except in favour of steam
navigation—would lead to nothing except the ne-
sessity of a re-embarkation. Do I mean that France
ought to give to London a spectacle equal to that
which England gave to Copenhagen in 1807? No,
one act of barbarity does not justify another."
After allowing the uselessness of all wars which
are not founded on legitimate defence or reparation
of a defeat, and of all armed interventions, ho says—
" Had not France, still so imperfectly cultivated,
a better employment for the arms and lives of her
chilslren ? France, which has so long been without
roads, highways, canals, railroads—France, which
even now in 1859 has only the half of the railroads
she ought to have to profit by her minerals and her
coal mines, has she not had since 1823 better em-
ployment for her money and her loans ?"
M. de Girardin goes on for four pages asking
himself a great number of questions on the import-
ant affairs of the day, and invariably answers him-
self in the negative, concluding thus :
" If the Crimean and Italian expeditions were to
recommence France would, consequently, do well
to abstain from them. In 1849 as in 1853, in 1853 as
in 1859, the policy which France should have
preached and practised was the policy of absolute
non-intervention."
M. de Girardin relates with complacency his an-
swer to M. Guizot in 1846 on his being asked his
opinion by that statesman on the incorporation of
Cracow :
" If I were in your place," said M. de Girardin,
" I should present no protest against that act."
" What, then, would you do ?"
"I should order the French Ambassador at
Vienna to illuminate all the doors and windows of
his hotel."
" Why ?" asked the protesting and astonished
M. Guizot.
" In sign of rejoicing ,"

" For what ?"

" For that the Powers who signod the treaties of
1815 had just torn them with their own hands, arid
for that they could never again appeal to them !"
What M. Guizot said thereupon is not recorded.
M. de Girardin suggests the manner in which
France might occupy, industrially, commercially,
and as a maritime power, a rank equal to what she
occupies territorially in Europe :
" Does Russia wish to possess herself of the Straits
of the Dardanelles France is the ally of England
against Russia, but on condition that England shall
neutralise the Straits of Gibraltar, as also Babel-
mandel), menaced by Aden, restore to Turkey Perim,
which is the key to the Red Sea, disarm Corfu,
which is the key to the Adriatic, dismantle Malta,
which she took from us, and which she was bound
to give back to us by the Treaty of Amiens.
" Does England persist in keepiog as maritime
fortresses Gibraltar, which:she stole from Spain ;
Malta and Corfu, which she took from France ;
Aden, which she appropriated to herself, and which
she has made the Gibraltar of the Red Sea; Perim,