The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-24 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONLON, IVIONOAY EVENING, DECEMBER 24, 1866.

were here to read the present numbers, is the speed
with which intelligence is now conveyed. Admiral
NELSON'S despatch is dated August 3, and arrived
at the Admiralty on the morning of the 2d October;
that is, just two months. The messenger was de-
spatched overland, a circumstance to which NELSON
especially refers " in the hope that their lordships
" will approve the step." It is worthy of notice that
a single post-boy should be sufficient to carry the
letters to the chief towns of Kent, and that a single
robber was sufficient to appropriate them to him-
self, and that the boy's estimate of their value was
half a guinea.—Auglo-American limes.

Action of " Bears" on the London Stock
Exchange.

Capel-Court is one of those curious old English
institutions the like of which cannot be seen in
any other laud. The English have a marvellous way
of maintaining old customs by patching and adding
to keep the grotesque structure up to the wants of
the present time. The Army is a fine sample of
this peculiarity, and the London Stock Exchange is
a still better instance. A stranger, drifting into
any of the lanes which lead to Capel-court, with
the throng, may be under the impression that he is
in a thoroughfare till he finds himself in a spacious
hall with a lofty dome, crowded with people, and the
object of general attention. A loud voice cries a
number behind him, and instantly he is hustled in
every direction till battered and breathless he stands
outside the portals. When he is informed that
within that hall is transacted a vast portion of the
public investment business of the British nation
his surprise is not lessened that he, as a citizen of
that nation, with business to transact, should be
thus summarily ejected. None are admitted within
those walls except the two classes, who have appro-
priated to themselves the exclusive dealings in stocks
and shares. The brokers, with their offices in all
directions around, have the entrée to purchase and
sell on the part of the public ; the jobbers remain in
the hall to take up or dispose of these stocks and
shares as the opportunity offers. No man outside
the favoured clique can sell his own property, nor
does the broker, who is commissioned to act for the
outsider, dispose of the property to the real investor.
A system such as this necessarily induces specula-
tion, for it resolves itself almost wholly into
" time-bargains." No man can go with his shares
in his pocket, and dispose of these shares to a real
investor, receiving a cheque for the sum they rea-
lise. The main business done in the Stock Ex-
change is speculative—the parties to the sales and
purchases being merely backers of an opinion that
the property they deal in will rise, if they be pur-
chasers, or fall if they be sellers. It is more easy
to break down the value of property than to raise
that value, as it is more easy to damage a reputa-
tion than to make one. Experience has shown the
members of the Stock Exchange that more money is
to be made by selling shares they do not possess than
by buying shares they have no intention of paying for.
The Stock Exchange never held a very high repu-
tation in England, but late events have materially
injured even the estimation in which it had been
held. The machinations by which the Agra Bank
was destroyed is a fair sample of the proceedings
by which the Stock Exchange has obtained for itself
so unenviable a notoriety. A case has lately oc-
curred which has again attracted public attention to
the shameless jobbing which has influenced disas-
trously the property of shareholders that a few un-
principled speculators might obtain a profit. Last
week another of those panics occurred in railway
property which have marked so fatally the year
1866. Every sort of rumour was spread that the
debentures of several lines about to fall due could
not be renewed. These rumours were accompanied
by heavy sales of the stock of the lines in question,
which in the present state of the market had an
immediate effect in producing a serious fall. This
was followed by a telegram to Manchester to a
member of the Stock Exchange of that city I
" hear the B chairman has failed, please say true
"or no." Immediately the rumour spread through
Manchester that Mr. Wm IN, M.P., Chairman of the
South-Eastern Railway, had failed. That gentleman
happened to be at Manchester at the time, and was
therefore able at once to contradict the report, and
to take steps to discover the author. The effect
intended, however, was produced ; the shares fell
heavily, and the " bears," who had been operating
for this result, reaped a rich harvest. Every word
of the rumours proved untrue. The Bank of Eng-
, land had renewed the debentures falling due at a
fair rate of interest, and the line instead of being
in any difficulty was in a strong position. The
result was an immediate rise. Though railway
property may be damaged, it cannot, like a money-
dealing institution, be wholly destroyed by such
underhand manoeuvres. The banks and the credit
institutions had already, through the operations of
these people, been so depreciated that little could
be made by further proceedings against them ; and
in default of the more easy target they presented
the " bears" were compelled to turn their attention in
other directions. This in a measure accounts for
the violent fluctuations that have lately been wit-
nessed in railway property. The public are so
alarmed, and have experienced such terrible losses,
not only from the bad business done by many com-
panies, but still more from the operations of the
" bears," that the Stock Exchange has been
deserted, and the business there transacted
has been mainly on behalf of the members. The
crowd of jobbers and brokers cannot remain idle,
and if the public will not employ them they purchase
and sell on their own behalf. Thus property is
marked in the daily price lists with scarcely any re-
ference to its real value, and people who own shares
in companies are alarmed beyond measure to wit-
ness fall following on fail till the shares they hold,
if reckoned by this standard, have ceased to be of
value. So great is the danger of " bear" operations
against credit institutions that numbers decline to
hold such property, however sound intrinsically
they may consider the concern in which they have
an interest. Nothing but the interference of Par-
liament, by the enactment of laws directed against
time-bargains, can save this class of property from
the dangers to which it is exposed. ' Nor can any
permanent improvement take place until a strong
check be administered to the power of unscrupulous
operators.—Anglo-American Times.

tion of a canal around them, as the best means of
improving the navigation of the river, the mer-
chants' exchange of St. Louis has adopted a series
of resolutions, calling on all citizens of the States
bordering on the 3,Lississippi river who are inte-
rested in river commerce to meet in convention at
St. Louis in January, to take steps to bring the
matter speedily before Congress.
The Ophir Mining Company, whose stock is
owned at Boston, but whose gold mines are in
Nova Scotia, near Halifax, is now crushing quartz
at the rate of 18 tons daily, and since the second
week in September has extracted 1,546 ounces of
gold, worth in coin over $45,000. The gold, which
sells at the Mint for $19.80 per ounce, costs the
Company $5.

Cincinnati is to have a new reservoir, covering
fourteen acres, holding 100,000,000 gallons of
water, and costing $1,500,000. The work has been

begun.

One skate factory in Worcester, Massachusetts,
has consumed during the present year 5,000 gross
of screws, two tons of brass, 1,000 pounds of Ger-
man silver, nearly six tons of rosewood, and ten
tons of steel, which have been worked up by thirty-
five men and women into 25,000 pairs of skates. It
also uses annually 50,000 brass thimbles, which are
inserted in the wood, and to which the runners are
affixed, effectually preventing the splitting of the
wood.

From Canada we hear that the Provincial Go-
vernment has purchased in Hamilton, to be for-
warded to the Paris Exhibition, a collection of
native stuffed birds, said to be the best on the Con-
tinent. The Government has also purchased a
splendid set of furniture for the same destination.
Extensive preparations are being made in the mili-
tary buildings to accommodate the new artillery
equipments. In addition to guns and harness of
the newest patterns, the field batteries have been
supplied with the Spencer rifle. The Toronto Field
Battery have been practising with their new brass
guns recently received from England. They worked
admirably, and add much to the efficiency of the
battery. Lord Monck was on the eve of departure
for England, and it was rumoured that he would
not return to Canada.

Immense peat bogs have been discovered three
miles east of Port Colbourne, on the Welland Canal,
Canada West. The bogs cover three thousand
acres, lie from five to seventeen feet in depth, and
will average over the whole surface eight feet of
pure peat. A company is to be organised in Chicago
to derelope these beds, and it is thought that the
wonderful improvement in machinery for raising,
pulping, and pressing the raw peat, by which one
machine will prepare from 25 to 30 tons per day, at
a cost of but a few dollars per ton, will enable this
company to supply immense quantities to all the lake
cities at a cost to the consumer of not more than
five dollars per ton.
There is a bill now before Congress which
will, if it becomes a law, do away with the institu-
tion of polygamy in Utah. It purports to be a bill
" to regulate the selection of grand and petit jurors
in Utah," but it is really a bill for the extinction of
Mormonism. The 14th and most important sec-
tion provides that " if any person shall presume to
solemnise a marriage in said territory who is not by
this Act authorised to do so, he shall be deemed
guilty of a misdemeanour, and on conviction thereof
before any court of competent jurisdiction shall be
punished by a fine not exceeding poo, nor less
than $lOO, and be imprisoned in the Penitentiary
not exceeding six mouths nor less than one month,
or both." The " persons authorised by this Act"
to solemnise marriages are justices of the peace and
clergymen other than Mormon priests.
Construction trains are moving on the Minnesota
Valley Railroad within a few miles of Belle Plain,
and the road is expected to be completed to that
point before the ground freezes. This will be a great
boon to the farmers of that rich grain-growing re-
gion, who have for the last few years suffered so
much from low water in the Minnesota river.
The fashionable audiences which attend the
" Lowell Lectures" in Boston have been somewhat
staggered by some of the stories that Professor
Agassiz has brought back with him from Brazil, and
has been laying before them in a course of lectures
which he is now giving in that institution. One of
these is that a sportsman on the banks of the Amazon
fired at a parrot perched in a tree, and brought down,
besides the bird, a fish. This eccentric fish, which
the professor says he has found several miles away
from its native river alive and well, has a breathing
apparatus which enables it to live a long time out of
water, and it has also, it is to be presumed, a scan-
sorial arrangement for climbing trees, though, as the
lecturer remarked, it climbs only trees that have a
very rough bark.

The reports of Generals Sheridan and Sickles,
sent in by General Grant, are extremely interesting,
giving us a picture, of which we cannot doubt the
accuracy, of the social condition of the South. More
instructive testimony to the value of the protection
which white courts extend to black men it would
would be impossible to have—or testimony more
corroborative of the opinion we have all along ex-
pressed in these columns, that the exceptional cha-
racter of the relations between the two races at the
South rendersof little value all rules drawn from the
experience of most other countries in the work of
reconstruction. We find that, according to General
Sheridan, the trial of whites for offences against
freedmen and Union men is a mere farce. The legal
form which the ferocious prejurlice of the planter
class takes has sometimes a touch of glum humour
about it. Two soldiers were murdered in
cold blood in Texas. The grand jury ig-
nored the bills against the murderers, but
indicted Major Smith, of the Seventeenth Infantry,
for " burglary," for breaking into a house in an
attempt to arrest them. In South Carolina, Gen.
Sickles's report shows that the recent Legislative
admission of the blacks to civil rights is merely
words on paper. Magistrates will not issue war-
rants against persons guilty of the robbery or mur-
der of the coloured people and Unionists ; sheriffs
will not arrest them, or, if arrested by the military,
let them escape from custody ; and juries will not
convict them. In fact, there is no security for life
or limbs of persons obnoxious to the majority, ex-
cept such as the scanty garrisons can afford. We,
who hold that the protection of the weak and obnoxi-
ous is the first duty of Government, are therefore in
favour of as many, and as strong, garrisons as may
be necessary to render crime and lawlessness so ter-
rible to the ruling class at the South that they will
become only too glad to provide security for every-
body themselves. So far from trusting any human
being to their generosity, we would keep them de-
pendent for everything on our generosity until they
had learned the first lesson of civilised life.—
The Nation.

COMMERCIAL

NEW YORK, Dec. 8, 1866.

The President's Message had little effect on money
matters, and even the report of the Secretary of the Trea-
sury seams to have produced no change either here or
abroad. Though money continues to grow easier, stocks
and shares are still unsettled and fluctuating. The best
business paper is easily negociated at 6 to 7 per cent., and
call loans are effected without difficulty at from 5 to 6 per
cent. I take it, however, to be a sign of the times that
there is more care in discounting paper and examining
security. The panic of a fortnight ago has left its traces,
and induced much greater caution. The supply of money
is not very large, but quite sufficient for the demand, as trade
is uncommonly and remarkably dull. The fact is, we are in
a transition state, from an inflated and unduly expanded cur-
rency, tending down to specie payment. The action also of
the tam laws is said to work unequally. At the West the
general symptoms of the money market are unchanged,
and business is very quiet. The produce and provision
markets are without change ; though from the short sup-
ply of Into prices have slightly improved. All kinds of
dry goods are drugs in the market, and many of the woollen
mills are running on short time, while some have stopped
altogether. Tho stock market' has continued quite ex-
cited, and towards the close of the week with a decided
decline. The demand for investment in the eastern
railroad stocks continues rather light, and is mostly
of a speculative character. The shares of the
western roads have quite generally fallen off 1 to
2c., with the exception of the Chicago and North-
Western, which holds its own steadily amid the general
subsidence. The Pacific mail steamship company's stock
was sold on Wednesday, at New York, at 168, a lower
figure than for some time before, under the effect of an ap-
plication for an injunction said to come from an owner
of forty shares, to prevent the company from completing the
exchange of their over-issued stock for United States sixes
of 1881. The war of the express companies still continues,

and the later quotations show a slight improvement for the
old organisations, Adams standing for most of the week
at $7B to $BO. Gold has been more than usually waver-
ing, and the extremes have been 141 and 138. The closing
price on Thursday was 139, with an upward tendency.
The amount of gold now in the hands of the Government
is quite large, and the expectation is increasing at Now
York that someof it will soon be put upon the market. The
drain of greenbacks to the South still continues. Tho
weekly report of the Boston banks presents rather
an unfavourable appearance on account of the decrease
in deposits and legal tenders, exceeding, during the
past week, $3,000,000, and at New York the banks
make a similar showing. The total amount of ex-
ports from New York for the first eleven months of
the year was $175,383,922, an increase of over $15,000,000
from last year's transactions. The imports for the
same time have increased nearly $100,000,000, and
now amount to $275,965,871. This largo balance of trade
is in a proportion thus far that will make the total for the
official fiscal year ending June 30, 1867, much greater than
that of last year, which was nominally over $8,000,000,
though from smuggling and undervaluation of imports
probably these figures would be too small. The customs
receipts at Boston during November were $1,393,838, and
thus far during the year $16,651,463, showing an increase
over the corresponding months of 1865 of $1,392,938. At
New York, on Thursday, the custom-house receipts were
$219,000. The exports of Boston for the week ending
November 30 were only about one-half as much as (luring
the corresponding week last year.

(From E. F. Satterthwaite and Co.'s Weekly Circular,
December 19.)

The Africa brought us advices from New York to the
4th instant. The week had been broken by the Thanks-
giving-day, and business had been dull on the Stock
Market, but on the whole quotations were well sustained.
Government Securities were but little altered, and the only
noteworthy change in Railroad Stocks was an advance of
about $5 in Chicago and North Western. Gold was steady,
and money easy at former rates.