The Sun.
London, England, 1857-04-23 00:00:00

THE RUSSIAN RAILWAY ROBBERY
SCHEME.

Strange to say—for it really is a fact, and a
remarkable fact—that most eminently credulous
personage, the British capitalist, does not come
forward to sow his sovereigns broadcast over the
boundless dominions of Russia. He does not cal-
culate how many of those precious articles it will
take to form a continuous line from St. Petersburg
to Kaffa, or to spread in the form of goldleaf over
the steppes of Crim Tartary. He distrusts an
empire the domestic policy of which is seclusion,
and its foreign policy aggression,—which plans its
internal communications for external operations,
and makes mercantile value secondary to strategic
importance. His suspicions are not allayed when
he hears that the very materials of the proposed
lines are to be smuggled in duty-free, like an
Ambassador's luggage. He recoils from a region
where it is all State, and no public ; where trade is
tariffed up to the throat, and opinion is always on
the march to Siberia. Foolish bird as he is, he
fears to venture his bill down the throat which in-
vites him ; for though, no doubt, there is a bone
to be extracted, there are teeth also to be repassed.
In fact, our old gentlemen and our old ladies, and
the motley group that always turns up in a list of
shareholders to Bubble Banks and Diddlesex Rail-
ways, are just now in no humour for the bait, not-
withstandiug the clerical decoy-duck described in
our City Intelligence, who is always ordering
20,0001. worth of Russian scrip from Brussels or
Amsterdam. The sphere of enterprise is so distant
and so vast ; the lines are so long and so strag-
gling ; the conditions so utterly precarious ; the
contingencies so beyond all English calculation ;
the domestic influence so absolute, the rivalry of
all kinds so possible, and, if profitable, so certain,
that, strange to say, nobody is trying to steal a
march on the Stock-Exchange and get his cent.
per cent. by an empirical exercise of his private
judgment. Englishmen, indeed, dearly love to win
money against tremendous odds. They like mer-
cantile quackery, and swallow kill-or-cure specula-
tions with wonderful gusto. It is a proud moment
indeed, in the most sanctified of lives, when a man
can let out to his confidential friend, mid through
him to the who's town, thatthe got 20,0001. by an
investment which he alone had the sagacity or the
courage to try. What has a man to do after that
but to die in the odour of affluence ? Yet, with
this short cut to wealth now open to us, notwith-
standing its riAky and paradoxical character, no-
body comes forward, at least not openly. Ten
years hence we may possible hear that the worthy
Prebendary Savealt, whose will has just been
proved, doubled his fortune by Russian railways ;
but at present the E,tablisbmenr, the Faculties,
the Half-pay List, and Dowagers keep aloof; and
the Emperor of Russia will have to rebait his hook,
to alter his terms, to give up his enterprise, or to
make his subjects construct their own railways.
Not, then, for the sake of further warning, for
none appears to be necessary, but rather to justify
ourselves for the part we have taken, we will tell a
short story of a much more promising scheme,
in a much more improving Agion, and one much
more within the reach of lirifsh surveillance. Ten
years ago there was the flourishing State of Indiana,
which everybody could know as much about as he
pleased. It is needless, however, to extol its peal-
tied, its resources, its everything ; for, as the se-
qUel shows, they were all considerably too good,
and are the very cause of the whole mischief we
have to tell. Ten years ago,, then, this very
promising young State had made, immense im-
provements, and still found great room for
improvement ; and what with past, present, and
future improvements, both owed and wanted a
great deal more money than its Government
could ju,t then lay its hands upon. In fact,
it had got into that stage of difficulty which we
have been lately told in the Bankruptcy Court is
certain to occur in the second or third year of the'
soundest undertakings. It owed some millions
sterling, and, having paid no interest on its debt
for six years, it was on the eve of repudiation, just
as its natural resources were showing themselves in
brighter colours than ever. So, after some negotia-
tion, a compromise was made between the State
and its creditors, a good many of whom were at
New York, but many more, we fear, in this coun-
try, which strikes us as about the most splendid
conception that ever entered into the head of finan-
cial defaulter. We are not surprised to find a com-
mittee of the unfortunate dupes saying of the suc-
cessful performers that "they smote the rock of
financial resource, and the living waters gushed
forth ; they touched the rock of public credit, and
it sprang upon its feet." Indeed, after a caretull
examination of the whole scheme, we take the liberty
of suggesting to the Emperor of Russia to send at
once to Indianopolis, and secure, on any terms
whatever, the services of the genileman who made
this arrangement ; for we are quite certain if any-
body can cover all Russia with a reticulation of
railways at the expense of the British, French,
Dutch, and everything except Russian public, it is
the parties in question. Our own immediate pur-
pose, however, in referring to it is just to show oui
own countrymen how utterly unable they must be
to estimate the prospects of any new and distant
enterprise, and how entirely they must be at the
mercy of Governments, social influences, commer-
cial changes, and accidents of all kinds beyond
their control.
The following, then, was the compromise made
by the State of Indiana with its wearied, but still
hopeful, creditors of all nations :—Among various
improvements in progress or intended the most
advanced and the most promising was a canal.
Do not start, British reader, at the idea of an
unfinished canal in the year 1846, or suppose
that there must also have been a gross of green
spectacles offered with it to prepare the eyes of
the creditors
,for the inspection of the bargain.
The canal was absolutely necessary to the develop-
ment of Indiana. It was fed by the river Wabash,
and ran through .the State, of course avoiding as
much as much as possible other States, and joined
the Ohio and Lake Erie. The financiers, brokers,
and engineers marked out an extensive basin that
the canal must accommodate, and whose traffic it
mast for the present monopolise. In fact, it was
the highway of the State, and what put that beyond
proof was, that some score of intended railways
were all directed to points on the Wabash and Erie
Canal, and thus promised to fulfil the pleasing re-
lation of branches to trunk, feeders to main cean-
net, children to parent, or whatever else one may
please to imagine them. It was true that the State
of Ohio had a rival canal, and that the Stats of
Illinois had a rival and all but parallel railway
forthcoming, but what were they to Indians ? Un-
fortunately, the State had not even money enough
t ) finish the canal, so by way of idling two birds
with one stone the State got its creditors to finish
the canal at a cost of $BOO,OOO, and then take the
profits in payment of half the debt. They caught
at lhe proposal so eagerly that, half doubting their
luck, they got a second Act to clinch the bargain,
and prevent the State from meddling withthecanal
till they had paid themselves out of its profits,
which all the most competent authorities in the
State said must be enormous.
Have our prescient readers followed the dodge ?
Not a soul of them, we will venture to say ? How
in the world are they to enter into the mystery of
an, American- or a Russian financial scheine till
they have actually put their finger or their foot
into it ? Why, the Wabash and Erie Canals wasi.
of Bourse, prodigiously prosperous by con tribut,ing
to the construction of the railways that were to
ruin it. It was the scaffold of the buitdilig_the
contractors' tramway and plant, to be cleared off
and sold for waste iron as soon as the real work
was fini-hed. As fast as the canal was pushed on
the railways on both sides were pushed on too,
and tho canal supplied theta and the population
flowing into the State with rails and materials of
all; kinds. But as each railway was finished it
commenced a most undutiful competition, and beat
the old canal, or rather the old boat, off the lino.
The creditors opened their eyes like' puppies the
second or third year after the bargain, and at their
entreaty the State abstained &obi actually entering
the field. against a
them. But railwa of course it
must have, as the neighbouring Stares'were makirig
them fast; so it passed an act allowing the construc-
tion of railway
a by private enterpri •
se and the work
went on apace. her a time, then, the canal
bad a suicidal prosperity, which, of course came
to an end when the railways in this d the *gh
bouriog states were all • de. It an
le
LOW can ore
-
e.
just keep itself going, if it can do
SO MIA They rents and tolls are swallowed up M the expenses ;
they have been reduced to 20 per cent., or less, of
what they were, brit, as all the profitable traffic •
P
carried off to the railways, and the greaterl/.1
the heavy traffic too, the canal is a bankrupt con-
cern. It has answered a temporary Purpos, and
is how good for nothing. The shareholders are
coining again to the Legislature of Indiaua—es,
longer, of course, as indignant creditors—they have
lobt that position—but as outwitted and ruined,
mortgagees, and ask for a dole from the State Trea-
sury. Our readers know, of course, how likely
they are to get it. But, can anybody say they are
a hit Inure at the mercy of the Legislature of In-
diana, or that they have proved themselves a bit
more s mple and credulous than any ordinary Eng-
lishman throwing his money into Russian railways?
We can only say that even
now we would rather
invest in Indiana tiler' in Russian railway shares,
for there is always some hope in the justice of a
fiefs and prosperous people, but nene whatever in
either the power or the desire to pay of a corrupt
bureaucracy. —7:Times.