The Sun.
London, England, 1861-07-05 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, JULY 5,9 'B6l.

the largest distilleiies and many industrial establish-
ments are either sinking or have already suspended
business; several companies arc winding up their
affairs; shareholders in large concerns are dis-

posing of the best shares at a loss of 50 per
cent." Certainly enough and to spare, here, of mer-
cantile and financial sources of embarrassment to
the Muscovite Government. To say nothing of the
political sources of embarrassment accompanying all
this dire confusion in the commercial world in the
western provinces of that vast empire, the countries
peopled by the Poles ! Close upon the heels of this
last Polish agitation come these threatenings of
bankruptcy, of diminished labour, of withdrawn
wages,with portents of yet more dreadful evils in the
future, evils absolutely certain to supervene upon
these troublous times, in the shape of scarcity and
disease, it may even be in the end of famine and
pestilence! All this, of course—unless, unless there
be contrived some timely interposition either of the
Government, roused for once from its dispotic in-
difference, or—of Divine Providence !

It is not an ordinary foreshadowing of peril to the
Russian community this intimation of the Borsen
Zeitung of yesterday. That intimation—announcing
to the world not so much rumours only as actual
events that have already taken place, or that are
taking place—is, without any extravagance of
phrase, one in truth of the most alarming character.
Mining establishments—cotton mills—sugar houses
—manufactories—industrial enterprises of various
kinds, are all thus spoken of as grievously embar-
rassed ; as asking eagerly, despairingly, for enor-
mous subsidies, " subsidies amounting to several
millions of roubles ;" as closing their works ;
as suspending business ; as visibly sinking or even
winding up their affairs with a panic-stricken pre-
cipitation. " Several Companies," it will have been
remarked, the Borsen Zeftung speaks of as coming
to an end prematurely as Companies : the " share-
holders" in certain " large concerns" [a very free
translation, doubtless for the benefit of the telegraph
officials, from the original phrase in the St. Peters-
burg journal]—the shareholders in certain "large
concerns" there being in effect so panic-stricken
individually that " they are disposing of the best
shares at a loss of 60 per cent.," or (we sup-
pose) thereabouts. At any rate, whether with
sufficient cause or not, the mercantile com-
munity at the other extremity of Europe
is quite manifestly at this moment full of
anxious foreboding and trepidation. And, mean-
while, the Russian autocracy, stricken thus with
financial confusion and mercantile embarrassment
within, is being eaten into by a political gangrene
at one of its extremities. Much, in fact, as the same
direful combination is revealing to us, has long
been revealing to us the Austrian despotism in
extremis. Fiscal and financial confusion, a con-
fusion that is ever becoming "worse and worse
confounded," may of course be spoken of with
perfect accuracy as the normal condition, as the
chronic anguish of the Austrian Exchequer.
But, in addition to that, in itself most
perilous affliction, the KAISER'S Government
has of late had the Hungarian gangrene festering
and enlarging at one of its extremities. Whatever
the sequel of this present crisis may be among the
mercantile classes in Russia—there unquestion-
ably is that crisis fully upon them, and that more-
over, as a melancholy coincidence would have it,
simultaneously with the pressure of the present
weighty Polish anxiety upon the Imperial Govern-
ment. The Emperor ALEXANDER 11. appears to
have fallen, indeed, upon evil days—and that,
moreover, at a juncture the most deplorably
unexpected. For it will be yet remembered,
it is not probable, in fact, that it will
be very soon forgotten—that it was but upon
the very morrow of the Emancipation of the
Serfs throughout the Russian Empire that the
streets of Warsaw were dyed red with the blood of
its unarmed Polish citizens, men, women, and chil-
dren, cruelly slaughtered without the smallest pro-
vocation by the soldiers of GORTSCHAKOFF. ALEX-
ANDER may yet extricate himself from the "slough
of despond" into which his councils have been
latterly sinking—but these latest tidings from the
metropolis of his vast Empire indicate rather
ominously that the urgency for some attempt at
least at this extrication are rapidly becoming, in
truth, very imminent.

Testimonials have long since become so popular
that by an inevitable reaction they are latterly
becoming unpopular. There are occasions, how-
ever, when public feeling can find no happier
expression than in the getting up of yet another
Testimonial. There is one movement of the kind
now on foot that we ourselves do most certainly
regard with very great sympathy, and one that
we are anxious to promote at once by the earnestness
and cordiality of our advocacy of it. We mean the
one which was commenced only yesterday down at
the Mansion House, when, under the presidency of
the Lord Mayor, a goodly gathering of the citizens
of London assembled there to inaugurate what we
trust will soon be known far and wide, and long
remembered when completed as The BRAIDWOOD
Testimonial.

The origin of this generous effort on the part of
the public to commemorate the merits of a good
and zealous public servant was fully expressed in
the long-winded resolution (the lstlresolution)—pro-
posed yesterday by Mr. TIiE, M.P. for Bath,
and Architect of the Royal Exchange, and
seconded by Dr. CUMMING, the popular
Scotch preacher, one of whose congregation
the eminent public servant, deceased, had been
during several years past. This resolution, inti-
mating plainly but dully, through a rather tedious
flux of words, " That it is the opinion of this meet-
ing that tho high character, and long and useful
services of the late James Braidwood, C.E.,
the founder and superintendent of the London
Fire Brigade, taken in connection with the
painful circumstances under which he lost his
life in the gallant discharge of his duties at
the great fire of the 22d June last, [and further sup-
ported by the consideration that the community at
large may be justly said to have shared for many
ysueagratinsesinthge advantages arising from the devotion of
his talents and services to the single purpose of
and promoting the means of adding both
to the security of life and property], render it
expedient and proper that the profound regret
manifested by all classes at his loss should find ex-
pression by means of a public subscription, to
be applied to the benefit and advancement of his
children and sisters." The passage which we have
marked off with brackets in this one comprehensive
but otherwise admirable resolution, we cannnot
but think might have been left out with advantage.
And we think this and avow this to be our thought
the more readily, because the opinion expressed in
the passage thus indicated is in itself so entirely
superfluous. The truth it enunciates is so per-
fectly well kLown, is so literally notorious. Of it
reason, good and valid reason to bear Mr.
we might say indeed— cela va sans dire! We
Balitl hAalvDe.
WOOD'S name in our grateful remembrance—Wc,
the 2,998,000 (according to the new census) or (to
speak in round numbers) the 3,000,000 inhabitants
of London and Westelfuget' have ample reason, We
repeat, to do so. And it ;s. Pecans() of
this, that we count confidently upon the Tar..