The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-07 00:00:00

TILE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 7,186 S.

ME. PEABODY.

The fol;6wing letter has been addressed to the Right
lion. Lord Stanley, M.P. (chairman) ; his Excellency
Reverdy Johnson, United States Minister ; Sir Curtis M.
Lampson, Bart., Sir James Emerson Tennent, Bait., and
Y. S. Morgan, Esq.:—

" London, sth December, 1868.

"My Lord and Gentlemen,—l beg to acquaint you,
who have so kindly undertaken the management of the
fund set apart under my second deed of gift of the 19th
April, 1866, for the benefit of the poor of London and its
vicinity, that in pursuance of an intention which I have
entertained since the creation of that fund, I am desirous
now of adding to it a further sum of £lOO,OOO. In con-
templation of this I purchased, about three years ago, a
tract of freehold building land of about fifteen acres in
extent, at Brixton, near the City of London School,
easily accessible, and within a few minutes' walk of fre-
quent trains to and from London. This land has increased
in value, and can now be let on building leases of eighty
rears at rents producing about 8 per cent, per annum on
the cost, which is £16,285 17s. 3d. This land I propose
to convey to you with the same powers as are
conferred by the deed over the other property
of this trust, and with discretion to you either to deal
with it as a source of income by letting it, or any portion
of it, on lease ; or, should you deem it expedient, to retain
it in your own hands, as sites for dwellings to be erected
by the trust. Pursuant to my letter of the 29th
January, 1866, I transferred to you, subject to a con-
tingency therein explained, 5,000 shares in the Hudson's
Bay Company, which accordingly stand in your names,
together with 642 additional shares purchased by the
re-investment of the accruing income of the previous
5,000. These 5,642 shares I have since redeemed con-
formably to the deed of the 19th of April, 1866, by the
payment of £lOO,OOO on the Ist of February last. I
have now to acquaint you that it is my intention,
so soon as the necessary deeds can be prepared,
to hand the shares over to you, to be retained or dealt
with according to your best judgment and discretion. The
price of these shares shall be fixed on the 17th instant by
the Stock Exchange sales on that day, when I will hand
to you a cheque for the balance to make the gift a cash
value of £lOO,OOO. This amount will increase my foriner
donation of the second trust to £200,000, and, including
my gift under the trust fund of March 1862, of £150,000,
a total of £350,000. I trust you will see manifested in
this further donation an expression of my entire satisfaction
with the manner in which you have conducted the affairs
of the trusts.—l am, with oreat respect, your humble
servant, GEORGE PEABODY."

TIIE ALABAMA CLAIMS.

(From the Anglo-American Times.)

The settlement of the Claims for the damage
done to American commerce by rebel cruisers
brings up the discussion what those losses really
were. We have already given a list of every ship
captured, but the number, although numerous,
and the losses, although heavy, could not have
driven the greatest of all mercantile marines from
the ocean. The opinion is general throughout
America that the real injury can never be reitn-
bursed,cbeing the decay, indeed the destruction, of
the ocean-carrying trade, which, at the time of the
war, was mainly in American hands. All allow
that the merchant ships flying the American flag
had increased to a larger tonnage than that even of
Great Britain. All allow that while the ships that
flew the American flag were native built, a con-
siderable portion of those sailing under the Union
Jack were American-built; and the deduction is
clear that the ship-building trade of America must
at that time have been the greatest possessed by
any country. No one now disputes that American
yards are silent, that the American Flag compara
tively seldom met with on the ocean, that the foreign
carrying trade to and from even American ports is
now mainly in the hands of foreigners, against whom
American shipowners complain they cannot com-
pete. It never seems to cross the mind of an American
that this can be accounted for by other causes than
the havoc wrought by the rebel cruisers. Hence-two
errors—the one that a few contemptible privateers '
could almost irrevocably destroy the trade of such
a nation, and the other that it would be for the in-
terest of Americans to leave the question open till
they could cut England's commerce to pieces and
transfer her trade to themselves when she became
engaged in war. If it be not to the civil strife
and mainly to these cruisers that the decay of
American commerce is due, to what other cause
can it be ascribed ? Now to this question we give
the following answer with much diffidence and he-
sitation, as it appears to have escaped attention.
At the outbreak of the Civil War a great change
was taking place in the material for building ships.
That change was simply from wood to iron, which
latter was found cheaper, more easy of construction,
requiring less repair and more lasting. With a few
grave drawbacks iron established its superiority. One
drawback was the difficulty of keeping the bottom of
the vessel clean, but this has been remedied, as had
always been expected. Another Was the difficulty of
adjusting the compass, influenced as it was by the
mass of iron around, but this also was rectified ;
the third was the inevitable loss of the ship
if she struck, holes being torn out where wood
resisted. Water-tight compartments were in-
vented, generally a poor defence, by far the best
being the clear knowledge in the mind of the navi.
gator that if he did not steer clear of rocks he
would soon be at the bottom. For some time pre-
vious to the war and during the contest this change
was making way; but another was simultaneously oc-
curring, scarcely less important as against the Ameri-
can shipbuilding interest. The successive improve-
ments and simplification of machinery were substi-
tuting steam for sails. Had it not been for MitTRY'S
discoveries, and his wind charts, which made a

voyage to the antipodes, or around the Horn, little
less certain under sail than with steam, the change
would have been still more rapid. But its effect is
very plainly discernible in the multiplication of the
fleets plying between Europe and America, in the
almost total transfer of emigrants from sailing
ships to steam vessels, and the preference given
to the latter, even for the carriage of goods, not-
withstanding the higher rates. Thus then there
was a double change at work, the one in the ma-
terial, and the other in the propelling power —from
wood to iron, and from sails to steam. Now bow
would these changes have affected the American
builders had there been no war ? Although Maine
could contend, not only successfully, but under-sell
English wooden-built ships, what chance had Maine
in building an iron steamer against the Clyde?
Supposing that we are correct in our assertion that
the change was inevitable under any circumstances,
and that it must eventually have silenced the ship-
yards of Maine, the war, and the rebel cruisers, only
hastened the natural destruction in progress, of the
American ship-building trade, and we now main-
tain that the destruction neither was, nor could have
been accomplished, by such agency as the privateers.
There are points bearing on this subject which
ought not to be overlooked. America settling
backwards from the sea, the first colonies were
along the coast, where the inhabitants naturally
assumed the habits nature enforced. They became
sailors in proportion to their proximity to ocean, and
as fishermen made the sea yield no small portion
of their food. But as civilization advanced in the
sun's course west, for ever west, the Atlantic was left
behind, and millions poured over the broad face of
the prairies, and myriads were born and grew into
men who had never looked upon the ocean. They still
keeping in Nature's course contracted rather an aver-
sion to than a pleasure in the sea, therefore while the
nation grew in magnitude its proportion of sailors
did not correspondingly increase. Thus it hap-
pened that America, which at the beginning
of the century was emphatically a sea-faring
nation, ceased so generally to have that character,
and did not, and could not, in the common order
of things maintain that character iu a degree cor-
responding to the population of the country. The
Navigation laws in force at the time of the change
in the material for shipbuilding, and in the propel-
ling power of vessels, were little calculated to
remedy the consequence. Grounded on protection,
they enacted, that no ship, other than native built,
should fly the American Flag or trade from port to
port in the United States. Hence the disadvan-
tage at which American shipowners were placed in
taking their part in the ocean-carrying trade be-
tween the United States and Europe. It was
found to be impossible to build vessels to compete
against the Cunard, the Inman, the Hamburgb, the
Bremen, and the Brest lines, constructed on the
Clyde, as the cost w ould be enormously increased
if ordered in New York, against no advantages.
But what is the consequence ?—Why, that Ame-
rican merchants have no share in the profits of the
carrying trade—that all the transport fleets are the
property of foreigners, and that one of the finest
schools for sailors is lost to the country. But it is
vain to attribute these results to such a paltry
squadron as the Alabama, the Florida, and the
Shenandoah. A very material cause of the decay
of the shipbuilding in Maine, and other States, was
the change wrought in the expenses of living by the
War. Taxation makes everything dear, and dear
living makes high wages. In its turn, high wages
creates costly material, and a ship from the yards
of Maine almost from beginning to end is the na-
tional productof the country, American labour alone
producing it. It was because land was plentiful and
the country unburthened, that food was cheap, and
labour not costly in former days, when Maine
turned her forests into stately ships, and supplied
them to all nations. It was then that in the decade
between 1850 and 1860 the total tonnage of the
United States rose from 3,772,439 to 7,361,639,
valued at £44,318,496. Had it not been for the
change in shipbuilding material, which enabled
England to construct vessels more cheaply for her-
self, Maine and New York, Massachusetts, Penn-
sylvania, and Connecticut, notwithstanding the
burdens resulting from the war, would have con-
tinued to supply the world with ships, and the trade
would have been stimulated, not depressed, by th

depredations of the privateers. Indeed it has been

so much the fashion to attribute all the causes of
decay to the Alabama and her consorts that many
Americans actually believe that tip: shipbuilding
trade was also ruined by that miserable craft. Why

if she had been a magician instead of a vessel no
yard ought to have barn proud of, she could not
have accomplished such a task—and Mr. LAIRD
who built her is elevated into importance as an

agent of an evil which he could no more accomplish
than locate himself on an estate in the moon. The

ravages of war are quickly repaired in peace, and
trade resumes its old channels, flowing where
the demand exists ; the ravages of storms, more

destructive still, are equally met, the risks in
both cases being covered by insurance, and in the
former falling really on the people at war. They

suffer and lose as nations who fight ought to do,
but war never destroyed the trade of a trading