The Sun.
London, England, 1857-11-25 00:00:00

HIGH WATER, AT LOND3 F_IREDGE.

This DAY—Morn., 23 min. aft. 7 —Evon., 53 slin aft. 7
TO-310RRow-31.,rn., 33 min. aft. 8 —Even., 13 min. an. 9

THE WE ITHER.—SUN Orrroz, NOVEIMER 25.
TLIZRII3NIRTER, Tat; SFi.ID3.
50—highest since nom yesterday.
40 —lovrea, this morning and daring tha night.
45 —this day at noon.

Bay in 29.57---rising.
wrg-D, N.E. ; moderate, but cold, with dirty, hazy,
rainy weather.

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, NOV. 25, 1857.

Every day brings. additional intelligence of the
suspension of large firms, whose credit had pre-
viously been perfectly unimpeachable. We need
not speak of the distress and misery thereby occa-
sioned to the working-classes. They are thrown
out of employment, and their only capital—their
labour, orproducing power—is rendered practically
6' inconvertible." The national revenue is thereby
materially injured, for they cannot purchase the
commodities on which duty is payable. If a
bankruptcy of the Exchequer is t) be averted
if the interest of the public debt is to be paid-
12eW and onerous taxes must be imposed to make
up for the deficiencies under the heads of Customs,
Ilizeise, and Income Tax—cl4ficiencies which must
inevitably arise unless very decided measures
are introduced on the meeting of Parliament next
week.

The mere suspension of the Bank Charter Act
will not, as we have already pointed out, suffice
under existing circumstances. Had the Govern-
ment letter been issued a few weeks sooner it
might have done so. Bat the evil was permitted
to go too far. It is notorious that the boasted n-
•
pri
c;plo of convertibility would have totally failed in
consequence of the very means adopted to insure
it. The Bank could not, although with six millions
and a half of gold in its cotitr4, have paid mere
than tenpeuce in the pound on its liabilities. Of
course, it had ample assets. But the securities
could not have been realised under the pressure
of a general panic, and enormous losses must have
been sustained from the mere attempt to do so.
We are happy to observe that many of the
journals which 'previously advocated bullionist
principles have come round to tho doctrines which
we have so long—and, we may add, se consis-
tently, advocated. The " 1411M4Sking" of the 1

Times' battery—the undisguised avowal of the
objects which the Act was intended to promote—
have produced their natural effects. It is now
clearly a question between the " hard calculators,"
who desire to make 20 or 30 per cent. of their
money, and the industrial population of the coun-
try. It was credit and cheap money that placed
this country in the high position which it has so
long occupied ; and that credit would be virtually
annihilated, or rendered so costly that it would
not be worth obtaining, if the OVEnSTONE theories
were fully carried out.
The pretext on which the Act of 1844 was
founded was that it would prevent fluctuations in
the value of money. Never have there been
such fluctuations since the establishment of the
Bank of England, or the first issue of paper
money. For 130 years the rate of interest, or
discount, which had been nearly analogous, only
varied from 4 to 5 per cent., with the exception
of a few weeks in 1838-9. Now, interest in the
public funds is 3/. 6s. Bd. per cent., while dis-
count is from 10 to 20 per cent.—the mini-
mum rate at head-quarters being the former,
while a large commission is charged by the dis-
count houses that frequently brings it up to the
higher rate. Under this trade and commerce
cannot flourish. The whole profits are diverted
from their legitimate channels, and put into the
hands of those who have no kindly consideration
for their interests or sufferings. England is not
a nation of "hard calculators." They are, happily,
an insignificant minority amongst a high-minded
and conscientious race. The rights of property
will always be respected ; but its abuses will be
earnestly deprecated. It is now known that the
Government interference was only in favour of
the Bank and the moueyocracy, who must have
shared its fate ; and the general, the universal
feeling is that some consideration should have
been exhibited towards those who are the thews
and sinews of the country, the payers of taxation,
the sustainers of the enormous burdens placed on
their shoulders. Speedy and decisive legislation
is required, and, until the Bank Charter Act is
annulled, there can be no amnesty for its delibe-
rate violation, occasioned by the tardiness and
timidity of Government.

Whether England had or had not pledged her-
self definitively and in perpetuity to the Austrian
Government in the matter of the Electric Tele-
graph—eastwards via Ragusa and Alexandria—
the whole complex question of our Postal and
Electric-telegraphic communication with the
Colonies must "perforce" lee brought, at an early
date, under the deliberate consideration of Parlia-
ment. There is no uncertainty whatever about
this. It must be For, more plainly than any
other difficulty of the time, this one, peculiarly and
undeniably, requires both an instant revision and
a radical reorganisation. Observe ! we don't
speak now of India exclusively. We refer to our
intercourse generally with the whole of our vast
and scattered colonial possessions--England's
Forty Colonies—north, south, east, and west—
European and Asiatic, American, African, and
Australasian. And we refer, moreover, as will

have been remarked not merely to one
but to all species of intercommunication. To
postal as well as to telegraphic ! To the trans-
mission of intelligence to and fro through our
mail-packet service by means of the steam-engine
and the scz eiv-propeller--and through the metallic
fibres thrilling with lightning, carrying thought
with the speed of thought, t 3 and. fro, over the
earth and under the sea, with the magical agency
of the copper wire and the galvanic battery !
Marvellous as have been the strides already
taken in this direction as compared with the

past, we are beginning already to feel per-

fectly well satisfied that as compared with the
probabilities of the future, our progress as yet can
only be aptly illustrated by the first uncertain
and hesitating steps of infancy. In speaking thus,
we are not by any means talking idly or at ran-
dom. And, in truth, we are only applying to
the present ep )ch the sane thought which
MICHAEL ANGELO modestly applied to himself in
his 0:d Age, when he drew the Sketch of the
Greybeard in the Go-Cart with the words under-
neath`: Ancora impara, " Still learning 1" As if
in vivid illustration of the comparative insig-
nificance of the advances yet made by Science
even is this wondrous Era of Railroads and Elec-
tric Telegraphs—have we this new contrivance of
which our columns only a week or two since con-
tained a detailed exposition, the ingenious and, to
all appearance, eminently successful contrivance
by which one of themore daring Mechanics and
Electricians of our Age proposes to unite, in one
marvellous wholc—let us designate it at once the
EUREKA !--10 unite in one marvellous whole the
Steam Engine and the Electric Telegraph 1

It has been recently observed, w-ath very great
truth, by one of the critics in the current
number of the Quarterly Review, that th©
problem of the 'present Age is, indubitably,
How to Save Time ! The veritable realty of
this, we take it, is indisputable. And yet with
the fact before us universally recognised—lettered
all over the globe in iron lines that all who run
may read—proclaimed in the ecream of every
railway whistle, and in the revolution of every
screw and paddle wheel—the British Government
selects this very period in the history of the world,
in which to bind over England from this time
forth and for ever to cemmunimate with India
solely through one little bit of Austrian wire !
At any rate, if they have not absolutely and defi-
nitively consummated this arrangement, her MA-
JESTY'S Ministers had contemplated doing so—
have all but done so. And knowing the fact that
they have done so, we have protested against the
flagrant monstrosity of any such uradertaking from
the outset with horror and indignation. The
atrocity, or at any rate the proposed atrocity, is
altogether so heinous of its kind that it de-
mands the speedy and searching scrutiny of
the Legislature. That scrutiny, please GOD,
it will now
,have very speedily, and the errors,
if any have already been- committed, will be
effectually rectified. Meanwhile we must
strenuously protest against the mere notion of
any such preposterous and outrageous absurdity
as that of binding ourselves over in perpetuo to
transmit "all" our communications between Lon-
don and Calcutta via the Austrian wire between
Ragusa and Alexandria.
An intelligent correspondent of ours, signing
himself "An Australian," took occasion the other
day to reprehend in terms of cmiaently deserved
severity the shortcomings of the present contrac-
tors for the conveyance of mails between this
country and its possessions at the antip)deF.
There cannot bo a moment's doubt that this
mcoantstiedreraalstoionreocif Parliament.nireste immediate and earnest
dent very justly ciserve As
theaccoiudrenctortroesptohne-
[ Emeu was of course a casualty for which the
Directors themselves could hardly in reason be
held in any way accountable. Not so, however,
the break down at an earlier date of the Oneida—
that having been clearly foreseen and distinctly
predicted. Other equally avoidable impediments
moreover, in the way of the required conveyance
of the Australian Mails—the tantalising absence
at one moment of a rest-ship at Suez, and

the incidental gap of a fortnight between the
arrival in this country of half a million of gold
and the advent of the mail bags and the bills of
lading essential as a preliminary to its distribu-
tion—all theses obstacles transpiring under a con-
tract of 44,0001. a year in excess of the amount
demanded by another competing association !
Surely here, too, we want a clear sweep of Reform
—even though it be effected by the besom of de-
struction !

Many despatches received at the India House
since the 1 sth of October have been published in
the Gazette of last night. They will be perused
with intense interest by every true-hearted
Englishman. Many of the gallant men by whom
they were penned have fallen in the discharge of
their arduous duties. NICHOLSON is no
more—but happily he lived to recog-
nise the attainment of the great object
for which ho was struggling. Delhi had fallen
before his lamented death. His brother in arms—
one whose name will also become a household
word—the illustrious NEILL, fell in the hour of
victory. But he knew that Lucknow was saved,
and that the helpless fugitives—the English
women and children—whose fates were de-
pending in the balance, were preserved from
brutal atrocities, similar to those that had occurred
in Cawnpore. It was a glorious cause, and nobly
did these departed heroes perform their arduous
duty.
The country has now a much easier duty to
discharge. Every possible honour must be con-
ferred on the mighty dead, and on their
surviving relatives. Their names should
be recorded in the national archives, and
in a manner respecting which there could be
no mistake. HAVELOCK is still living, and he
may yet obtain the rank which the nation de-
sires to see conferred on him. We have not too
many heroes, and we should not be chary of tho
rewards offered for really invaluable services.

THE BANK OF ENGLAND AND JOINT-STOCII

BANKS.