The Sun.
London, England, 1857-11-16 00:00:00

LONDON, MO DAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 16, 1857.

THE WEST INDIA MAILS.

SOUTHAMPTON, SATURDAY.
The Atrato has arrived with the West India
mails. Her dates are Jamaica, Oct. 26 ; Deme-
rara, 25 ; Trinidad, 25 ; St. Thomas's, 31.
She has brought 72 passengers.
Amongst her cargo is spocie to the value of
777,966 dole., of which 128,791 doll. consists of
silver, and 649,175 dole. in gold.
Her Majesty's ship Brunswick was at Cclon, the
Tartar and Arachne were at St. Domingo, the
Imaum was at Jamaica.
On the 28th ult. the mail steamer Trent commu-
nicated with the Basilisk, from St. Domingo to
Jamaica ; she reports the Tartar at St. Domingo
o❑ the 27th. Fighting was goingon with only five
days' provisions in the town. The Devastation
sailed on the 17th from Bermuda for Halifax. The
Jassem left Bermuda on the 18th ult. for Jamaica ;
the Terror, floating battery, was at Bermuda on
the 18th.

At Jamaica the weather, which had been very
wet, has changed. A frightful catastrophe had
happened in Kingston ; the railway had been
much damaged in consequence. There had been
much sickness of a serious type in Jamaica. Yel-
low fever has again appeared at Port Royal.
The Jamaica alining reports are encouraging,
business is active, principally in American
provisions and breadstuffs, owing partly -to the
monetary crisis in the United States. Sugar is
steady. Pimento is not active, though firm. Cof-
fee of the new crop has not yet been pl .ced in
market. Corn is almost sold out, and dyewoode
remains at last quotations.
A great scheme for wholesale robbery in South
and Central America has just been discovered ; the
person at the head of it is in New York.

6d. to 335. per quarter free on board. Beans are
somewhat firmer, at from 28s. to 295. 6(1. There
have been some arrivals of the new crop of oottm,
but the demand for this staple has also greatly sub-
sided, and prices are looking down.
The freight-market is quiet. In exchange com-
paratively little doing, bat the tendency is t ) lower
rates, owing to the growing scarcity of money.
First-class paper ou London, at three months, is
quoted at from 102 to 1021 piasters per pound.

broken, and got her silk gown torn in several places.
When she reached the goal for which she had striven
so expensively, she tendered for gold a bundle of
Western bank notes, which were of course refused:
AYR.—The panic extended to the branches In
Ayr towards the close of last week. Iu the blind
demand for gold, the security of the proprietary list
of each of the banks seemed to be entirely overlooked
by the less intelligent holders of notes and pap.,r—
whether the latter applied to deposits of ordinary
banks, or the smaller investments in saving's banks.
The atoppoge of the Western Bank increased the
excitement, and the run was transferred on Monday
evening, Tuesday, and Wednesday to the Union
Bank ; Tuesday evening and Wednesday to the
City of Glasgow Bank, which then clo.sed : and
Wednesday partially to the Clydesdale Bank,
but chiefly if not altogethe on its Savings' Bank
deposits. These banks were all able to me et their
demands even for gold. The undue alarm seemed
so be passing off on Wednesday, and an endeavour
was made to restore the confidence of depo Mora by
a public meeting in the Assembly Rooms, at which
a resolution was adopted expressive of confidence
in the banking establishments.
GALASHIELS. —The Border Advertiser says :
"We have had our share of the blast. Oil Wed-
nesday forenoon an uneasy feeling was prevalent
re garding the security of the City of Glasgow, caused
entirely by the pressure at the head offices in Glas-
gow and Edinburgh the preceding day. This soon
developed into an actual panic, and the bank was
all forenoon besieged by anxious depositors eager
to transfer their amounts to places of more fancied
security. A great majority of those who made ap-
plication were depositors in the Swings' Bank de-
partment, holding sums of only comparatively small
amount. In this case, as also in that of the West-
ern, the run was principally caused by small trades-
men, shopkeepers, artisans, and country people ;
none of our leading merchants, manufacturers, or
men of business evincing the least distrust in any
of the banks. On Thursday a run was now made
on the National, and to some extent alao on the
Edinburgh and Glasgow, which last had hitherto
escaped with little pressure. The demand at the
National was most promptly met. The run con-
tinued till the evening, when the arrival of the
favourable news from Edinburgh getting abroad
seemed to have an effect in restoring confidence,
and for half-an-hour before closing the bank the
pressure had ceased, and there was almost no
money withdrawn. A number of the shopkeepers
in town, and some of them of no mean standing,
had the imprudence, not to say the audacity,
during the panic, to refuse the notes of the
solvent banks. This conduct is most unbusiness-
like and reprehensible, as well as uufeeling, and
derogatory to the judgment of any party moving
in a respectable mercantile sphere. That instances
of this kind did occur is beyond doubt. There is
no la e- to prevent this extraordinary proceeding,
but the laws of honour and commercial confidence
ought to be suffieent protection against it."

THE MONETARY CRISIS.

(From, the Daily News.) •
The advocates of the Bank Charter Act are in
grievous perplexity and alarm—and no weeder,
after the sample which we have just had of the
effects of its much lauded mode of action. Even the
Times, despite the most uncharacteristic consis•
tency which it has hitherto shown upon this great
currency question, now. hesitates how to shape its
course. In one column it declares that the Bank
Charter Act is "abrogated"—that it " must be
looked upon as destroyed ;" whilst in another it
says, "As to the retention of the present law we
have not the slightest doubt." And our contempo-
rary then labours hard to show that the law, despite
its repeated suspension, may really still work very
well, if the nation will but be content, and go about
its business quietly. In the name of common sense,
we ask, wherein is the advantage of retaining a law
which upon each occasion of trial has been found
signally wanting ? At each period of real pressure I
yet encountered the restriction which forms the vital
principle of the Act has been found to operate as an
immense provocative to panic ; while, to prevent a
completefluancial convulsion, government have been
compelled to step forward themselves in the sight of
the world ae violators of the law. Why, even con-
' sideraeions of public morality forbid tie prolonga-
tion of the present most anomalous system. It his
always been a favourite assertion of its partisans
that in the panic of 1847 the turning point had
been reached, and that the process of recovery had
commenced, before the Act was suspended. The
assertion is totally unfounded, as every unbiassed
pereoes whose experience and observation date ten
years back well knows. In 1857, however, the Act
has at least had a fair trial, for the nation bore with '
it patiently until the rate of discount was raised 2
per cent. aeove the highest point reached in 1847.
All through the recent crisis, the Times—like a sur-
geon encouraging his patient under a painful ope-
ration, has kept patting the country ou the back,
assurin; it that it could really bear the trial very
well and that its fortitude Was the admiration of
all Europe, and pointing to the certainty of re-
lief if it would adly let the Currency Law operate to
its legitimate results; Down with a crash came the
Borough of Liverpool, the great houses of Dennis-
toun and Co., Naylor, 'Vickers, and Co., and a
score of other firms, most of which would have
been assisted through their difficulties,---at least to
a liquidation—had not all holders of money been
afraid. that the operation of the law would ere long
almost entirely cut off the prospect of further sup-
plies, "Never mind," cried the Tomes, "all this is
very well and proper ; our currency system works
bravely, and we are a pattern to the world." Even
as the monitor of I/rioting-house-square was speak
ing the Western Bank of Scotland stopped ; the
City of Glasgow Bank followed suit a run corn-
moused on the other Scotch banks, leading to the
withdrawal from the Bank of England of about
million and a quarter in gold in two days ; Messes.
Sanderson, Sandeman, anti Co. suspended, with
some three millions of liabilities and through the
length and breadth of the land comnieree discovered
that money was literally not to be had. it -Wet not
a question of rates at all : on the morning of the
day on which the Bank Act was suspended money
Watt really not to be obtained anywhere except at
the Bank of England itself, wheise entire resources
available for discount business are understood to
have been reduced to considerably less than a mil-
lion. Yet up to that very morning, so strong was
our contemporary's abidiug faith in the efficacy of
its nostrum, that he continued to descant' monoto-
nously upon its virtue, and to Wooer thee country
solemnly that it would be degraded iu the sight of
the world if it dared to dernaud one five single five
pound notes beyond the sum of fourteen millions
and odd arbitrarily fixed by the Act of 1844.
And so well was the great journal kt in coun-
tenance by the other organs of the Jones-Loyd
party that an evening. print—which, byetheebye,
is reputed to receive occasionally minieteL•
rial inspiration-ea- Was inadvertently betrayed into
the ludicrous error of publishing on the Thursday
evening in one column an alcicitieitt denunciation of
the evils to be expected from an ins:reased issue of
paper, and in a parallel column the dot:infante/A
letter authorising the Bank to extend its issuers
libitum. Now, we have really no idea of regarding
so grave a question from a narrow or partisau
point of view ; but it is requisite that these facts
should be brought prominently forWarcli for the
Times has already half ventured upon an insinuw
tion that at the moment when the let is suspended,
the pressure " seems about to cease." It ceases ;
but why I Simply because the public now know
that restriction which forms the gist of the Act is
abolished, and that the supply of money obtain-
able ain-
able from the Bank "approved securities'' is 03
longer confined to half a million or a million, but
is, if requisite. unlimited. And most assuredly
the turning point in the present crisis was not
reached until the Act was "abrogated,' We have
no hesitation in declaring that its maintenance for*
a single week longer would have led to the suspen'
sion of nearly every monied establishment and de-
posit-receiving bank in the kingdom. Chaos would
have come again in the financial world.
It is really toe absurd in the Times to hold the
country up to the scorn of theverld for so simple a
matter as suspending the provisions of a law, the
utility of which has long been more than ques
tioned by a large, and by not the least intelligent,
section of the community. From the lauguage
used in this matter foreigners might almost imagine
that the Bank had suspended each payments, or
that the nation had entered upon some course of
still more flagrant dishonesty. The suspension of
the Bank Act involves simply a return to a natural
state of things, and the abrogation of an artificial
restriction. Thy was the maximum note circula-
tion, unrepresented by bullion, arbitrarily fixed at
fourteen millions ? We know not that the •.uppor-
tere of the Act have a better answer than tbis—thet
it was so fixed because that amount of circulation
was indispensible. There was, consequently, no
principle, but merely a consideration of expediency
or prudence, involved in the arbitrary selection of that
sum. Surely, whe awe find it not merely expedient
and prudent, but absolutely necessary, to remove th