The Sun.
London, England, 1859-10-19 00:00:00

AUSTRIAN FINANCES•

"The Austrians," said the Emperor Napoleon at
the Battle of Rivoli, " are not apt to compute the
" value of minutes." Indeed, we might extend
the observation, and say that there is no modern
nation which, whether in peace or war, leaves time
so entirely out of calculation. If we could be re-
stored to the times before the flood, when a yeung
man never thought of marrying and settling him-
self till he was about seventy-five years of age, the
Austrian system might do well enough ; but really
in these days, when people live fast, move fast,
and resolve rapidly, the system of the house of
Hapsburg .is unsupportably tardy and wearisome.
The Austrian financial year terminates on the 31st
of October, and we are presented in the middle of
that month in 1859 with the account of the
revenue and expenditure for 1857 and 1858.
There may be many objections to representa-
tive institutions, but assuredly one advantage,
that Austria would derive from a House of Com-
mons would be that she would know what she had
spent while the knowledge was of some practical
value, and get an insight into her affairs before
they had become matters of mere antiquarian curi-
osity. This may be urged in excuse for this tardi-
ness,--that the Austrian balance-sheet exhibits a
state of things which no Government would be in
any hurry to disclose to its subjects. The expendi-
ture for 1858 was 319,022,584 florins, and the
total revenue 282,540,723 florins, and therefore the
deficit was 36,481,861 florins, or upwards of three
millions and a half sterling. This was the expen-
diture of a year of profound peace, undisturbed
either by wars or rumours of wars, for the first
threatening note was sounded on the Ist of January
_in the present year. Such was the hopeless and
helpless state into which Austria had drifted before
her recent calamities, that with a population of
thirty-six millions she incurs a deficit of upwards
of three millions and a half upon a revenue of
twenty-eight millions. For this excess of expendi-
ture over income several reasons may be given.
In the first place, the Government, being utterly
unchecked by any popular control, is said to
indulge in the grossest extravagance. In the
next place, the dominions of Austria, with the
exception of the hereditary States, arc held in
obedience by the sword, and hence the industry
of the country is crippled and its finances ruined
by the employment of a fearfully large proportion
of the adult population in the profitless idleness
of a barrack life. There is, besides, the interest
on the national debt, amount' ng to more than nine
millions and a half sterling. Still, when we con-
sider that in these islands a population of some 30
millions raises with comparative ease an income of
some seventy millions annually, we cannot but be
struck with the apparent inability of Austria to
raise her income to a level with her expenditure,
and feel how imperfectly developed that civilisation
must be which, with a larger population than our
own, sinks under a b-irden only half of that which
we actually bear. If we look at tke Ways clad
Means we shall see that Austria has not been slow
to employ every species of direct taxation. hhe
has a land-tax, a house tax, a trade-tax, an inhe
tance and legacy-tax, and an income-tax ; octrois,
excise, salt duty, tobacco duty, stamp duty, State
lottery ; and, among other things, she has made
about £150,000 by selling to younc, men drawn as
conscripts an exemption from military service.
The Austrian Chancellor of the Exchequer
cannot be said to have been negligent in the
imposition of duties, but the key to the whole
financial embarrassment seems to be found in a
single item. The Customs of the Austrian Empire
yield only £247,000, while the Customs of the
British Isles, with a population of less by one-sixth,
yield upwards of £26,000,000, or very nearly ten
times as much. Austria has little or no foreign trade,
because, with climate and soil capable of the most
varied productions, she interdicts importation and
lives nearly in that hidebound state of indepen-
dence of foreign nations which our Protectionist
squires used to commend as the greatest happiness
and highest prosperity to which a country can
attain. Of such a state of things we cannot hope
to say anything new. If an empire will insist
upon making its subjects its enemies, and govern-
ing them by the shallow and barbarous device of
playing off their national jealousies against each
other, it must expect to reap as it has sown, and
be crushed under the military expenditure which
its own stolid disregard of its best interests has
rendered inevitable ; and if a Government will
conduct its finances and fetter the industry of its
people in defiance of the most clearly demonstrated
scientific truths, it must suffer under the present
poverty and ultimate insolvency which it wilfully
and obstinately promotes. Tt a happy dispen-
sation of Providence that no Government can syste-
matically disregard its duties and obligations with-
out accumulating destruction over its head, which
must in due process of time descend and over-
whelm it.
But, if such is the account Austria renders for
the year 1858, what, when in the fulness of time
she shall see fit to take the world into her confi-
dence, will be the statement she will have to lay
befofb it of the expenditure of the disastrous year
1859 ? Hor military system has been crushed
to atoms ; her Generals have been outmanoeuvred ;
her armies have been discomfited; she has lost
battles, provinces, and honour; but we are much
mistaken if she has not lost these at a price which
ought to have assured her victory and safety. No
one, wo think, can deny that the campaign was
conducted on the part of Austria, at any rate, on
very economical principles. Verona was stripped
of cannon, and left without provisoes; the fine
cavalry of Austria never saw the field of Solferino ;
her admirable artillery were held in reserve very
far indeed in the rear of battle. Austria hopes to
receive some eight or ten millions sterling as an
indemnity for her share of the Lombard debt ; but
still we are much mistaken if her balance-sheet for
the year which closes at the end of this month w
illv
not startle even the admirers of paternal go
ment by the enormity of its deficiency. The revenue
of the rich provinces of Lombardy is gone, and yet
the causes which render the maintenance of a large
army necessary are as rife as ever. Venetia must
be coerced; the fortresses on the Mincio and the
Adigo must be armed, supplied, and garrisoned
after a very different fashion from that which an
overweening confidence had induced the Emperor
to suppose was sufficient. There is, besides, a fresh
danger to which Austria has hitherto been compa-
ratively little exposed. The series of reverses
which have taught very little to the Government
have taught a very great deal to the people. For-
merly Austria was safe in the dutiful affection of
her hereditary subjects. Bohemia, Hungary, and
Italy might rebel, the Eastern provinces might be
disaffected, but the heart of the empire, Austria
Proper, was sure to be sound. Now disaffection
is making way even there. The Austrians, and
even the Tyrolese, begin to see that a system
of internal repression and external exclusion,
of obstinate adherence to traditional absurdities
and aristocractic punctilios, is hurrying the
empire into the gulf into which so many more
potent confederacies have descended before her.
In the past they see nothing but discredit ; in the
future nothing but ruin. Their confidence in the
ability of their Government has, and not without
good reason, been destroyed. Their confidence in
the good fortune of Austria exists no longer. In
the continuance of the present system they see
nothing but ruin, and of its reform at the hands
of a feeble and incompetent Government they see
no hope. Their pride is humbled, their prudence
alarmed, their loyalty shaken, their confidence de-
stroyed. Evil as is the present, they are filled with
still gloomier apprehensions for the future. They
earnestly desire change, and are coming gradually,
but surely, to the conclusion that the road to the
required reform lies through the portals of a radical
change.—Times,