The Sun.
London, England, 1868-07-03 00:00:00

MONEY.—No. 3.

(From the Anglo-American Times.)
We have fully shown that Senator Sherman's as-
sertion that the pound sterling had decreased in 300
years GOO per cent. is really under the mark, and
the facts brought forward by the lion. David A.

Wells would lead to the conclusion that at least

in the United States, labour, as measured in coin,
had within the last few years risen so prodigiously
as to show a very heavy fall in the value of money.
But though the labourer in the United States now
receives far more in wages than he did before the
War, we doubt whether a dollar to him then was
not in its purchasing power worth more than two
now, and that therefore if his wages have but in-

creased GO per cent. he is in reality a loser. In this
wo see the real cause of di.t-content illustrated by
trade unions, and strikes, and the poor English agri-

culturist who trusted to the tender mercies of his

employer has found his earnings dwindle to a star-
vation scale owing to the medium of payment being
operated on by the simple law which reduces the
value of au article by increasing its quantity. The

fall in the value of money is not so apparent in

England as elsewhere. Within the lifetime of the
present generation Parliament has introduced a
system of taxation and a tariff which has proved
in the highest degree beneficial to the country.

The effect of free trade has been to cheape❑

materially the necessaries of life, and it has
been supplemented by the skill of the inventor
and the enterprise infused into commerce by un-
shackling industry. Steam has worked powerfully
in cheapening produce, and its aid has been more
called into play in England than in any other coun-
try. Putting the hundreds of minor ways in which
it is applied aside, and glancing at the single
method of weaving, we find every article we wear,
from the cradle to the grave, reduced in cost to an
extent that would be scarcely credible to our
fathers. But it is in its application to transport
that the benefits arc best seen. Let any person try
to picture to himself what the result would be if
the locomotive was suddenly paralyzed. Let him
imagine, if he can, a return to the days of sailing
vessels and stage coaches, and an idea would be
suggested how it happens that England has re-
mained comparatively stationary, while the cost of
living in other countries has so enormously in-
creased. The effect of a railroad is to equalize the
prices over the country, making a market for every-
thing saleable and checking all waste. A great
take of fish in Cornwall, in Wales, even in Ireland,
puts a cheap herring or mackerel on the table of a
Cockney, counteracting the state of things which.
before prevailed, when an article at the same time
was unsaleable in one locality and unobtainable in
another. The agriculturist, of course, benefits
more than the manufacturer as a rule, for his pro-
duce is mere perishable, more bulky and heavy in
proportion to value, and the city therefore profits
to a greater degree than the country, the chief
gainers being the extremities of the kingdom
and its heart. The tendencies of this huge
power being to equalize prices over the world,
and to render the greatest service to a centre of life
and commerce, introducing with speed, ease, and
security bulky and perishable produce, it follows
that England, which may be said to be the heart
of the world, will profit more than other lands.
And so it has proved, for the effect has been to
raise prices in distant places, and lessen prices in
London. The circumstances are then exceptional
which have kept under the cost of the necessaries
of life in Great Britain, and have deceived the Eng-
lish into the notion that money has not fallen as
predicted since the discovery of the Australian and
Californian gold mines. Really to see the effect
the English must go abroad, and we care not what
country they select, to a lesser or greater degree the
cost of living in it will be found to have increased.
It is so throughout France, and notably in Paris.
In Germany to a lesser degree, in Italy, and even
in Spain and Portugal. In Egypt the rise in prices
has been most marked ; in India it is a subject of
astonishment alike to native and European. A man
can only live at the trading stations in China who
can expend what elsewhere is a competence. Aus-
tralia and New Zealand from being cheap countries
have become expensive, and in America even the
great increase in a labourer's wages leaves him a
loser. While invention and good legislation 'were,
working conjointly for the advantage of England,
an exceptional circumstance materially aided in
preventing a great decline in the value of money.
The American War deranged the commerce of the
world, throwing the production of the staple next
in importance to that of corn into the hands of
Eastern nations, who would grew cotton only in
exchanget for coin. The gold productions of Aus-
tralia were intercepted at Galle and absorbed in
India. Europe, more especially France, was swept
of its silver, and the influx of treasure went on for
months at the rate of a million sterling a week into
liindoostan. The effect for the time was to neu-

tralize the production of California and Australia ;
and as the 'Endo() made bangles of, or buried, his
money, it was at least to a certain extent withdrawn
from circulation. Notwithstanding, the revolution
produced in India was considerable ; the price of
everything rising enormously, more especially
wages ; that is, the country became glutted with
the precious metals, and their value of course de-
clined. This shows that India is not such a sponge
as people believed, and being pretty well saturated
the influx has ceased, and an accumulation greater
than ever before seen is going on at the great
centres of London, Paris, and New York. Doubt-
less means will be found of dissipating the hoards;
first probably in profitable trade and industry, and
afterwards iu wild and thriftless speculation. But
the effect must be felt soon in the rapid decline in
the value of money. Other disturbing causes may
arise, such as a great European war, which may
again retard the accumulation and consequent fall
in the purchasing power of gold and silver. But as
the metals are not lost though distributed, the
ultimate effect is to make the fall more speedy
when times of security return, and they are again
brought into operation. We believe that we are
now experiencing this reaction after the American
war, though slowly, owing to the fact that the
Hindoo and the Egyptian hold fast to the coin they
get, and it is thus removed from circulation. The
yielJ of the mines of the Pacific States will soon
come with great effect into play for two years hence.
Nevada will be enabled to send its silver by the loco-
motive to New York or to San Francisco, and the
mining districts from the bme of the Rocky Moun-
tains to the base of the Sierra Nevada will be
penetrated by rail. Already steamers ply on the
Colorado, and the mines of New Mexico, Arizona,
Lower California, and Utah will have a cheap and
rapid means of transport. The effect will be pro-
digious, and will cause a great disturbance in values.
Those who have fixed incomes, and those who have
loaned money' to be returned hereafter in the course
4 of years, will suffer, and perhaps to an equal extent

..-.

in England, where they have hitherto been so for-
tunate in the exceptional causes we have enume-
rated. Even now the rise in the value of real pro-
perty is marked ; also in wages, in meat, and in
bread. What we maintain is that the disturbance
which has hitherto been slow in Great Britain will
hereafter be accelerated, and that a change is now
in progress which will soon be realized disagreeably
by numerous families.

GEORGE FRA NCIS TRAIN.

Last Saturday Mr. Train was again before the
Irish insolvency judge (Miller), when it was stated
by counsel on his behalf that the total amount of
the Ebbw Vale Company's debt was £503, the rest
being costs and interest. Mr. Train did not know
what becime of the iron of the street rails after
they were condemned. He never got a sniffing of
the proceeds. He had offered. to pay the expenses
of the manager of the Ebbw Vale Company if he
came over as a witness, but he refused. The money
he had obtained as promoter of the Atlantic and
Great Western Railway was what was settled on
his wife after the London tramway debts and the
Ebbw Vale debt had been deducted by Mr.
M'Henry. Mr. Train was president of the Credit
Foncier of America, ia which he had but a single
share for $l,OOO, on which $2OO had been paid. It
was given to qualify him. The judge being still
not satisfied with the schedule, adjourned the matter
once more until Tuesday, Mr. Train expressing
much regret, as he would have wished to sail (to-mor-
row Sunday) in the Scotia, "to be present at the
July convention." He was returned to the Marshalsea,
to continue the story of his life now so happily
commenced in the New York World. He heads
this, " Train making an attempt upon his life."
Calculating the difficulty how to begin, and with
my Ben Butler eye on the Manager's immortal, I
might commence thus :—" I was born at the age of
twenty-one without parents, and had it not been
for a kind Providence, and a few other friends, I
should have been as ignorant as the common people,
or even as you, gentlemen. The fact is, lam not
up to this work; naturally sensitive, constitutionally
diffident, with a shrinking from the public gaze
since my earliest infancy, I can hardly muster up
courage to write about myself. But you have asked
it, and it may help to use up my dreary life in jail."
The family were Methodists, living for generations
under the same old ancestral roof in Waltham,
Massachusetts. The New England Conference used
to meet there. You will see the old farm house,
in the preface of Stevens' History of Methodism
—Stevens, of the Zion's Herald, who so many
times has been to the home of my childhood, and
drank from that old oaken bucket that hangs in the
well. My mother was a beautiful woman. My
father was a man of intellect and education. That
accounts, etc.—modesty forbids. * * * My
name being Train is purely accidental. A young
man of fortune and elegant manners was reputed
to be engaged to my mother. He was going to New
Orleans. He introduced my father with the request
that he would show her all the attention he could
during his absence. He did so, and, to the astonish-
ment of his Southern friend, married her, which
coincidence accounts for my name being Train,
otherwise it would have been Fiske, and all the
stock prices, stock poetry, stock names, such as
'Train oil,' Lightning Train,' Express Train,'
Train off the track,' and so forth, would have been
lost to fame. Boston was my native city. I
apologise for it. I was born in a small front house in
High-street, now occupied by twenty-five Irish fami-
lies. How soon will the sons of St. Patrick oc-
cupy the mansions of the children of the Pilgrims."
In 1856 the New York Herald thus sketched his
career. " George Francis Train was the oldest son
of Oliver Train, who, for many years prior to his
decease, was a successful merchant in the City of
Boston, where his son George was born. In the
year 1832 or 1833 Oliver Train removed, with his
family, consisting of his wife and three children,
from Boston to the City of New Orleans. During
the first year of his residence at the South the
yellow fever prevailed in its most aggravated form,
and among its victims the entire family of Oliver
Train was numbered, with the isolated exception
of the subject of this notice. After Mr. Train had
buried the whole of his family but George, and a
short time before his own death, in the hope of
saving his only remaining child from a similar fate,
he committed him to the care of a captain of a
sailing vessel bound to Boston from the port of New
Orleans, to be restored to the surviving relatives
of his deceased mother. Thus, at the tender
age of four years, bereft of father, mother,
brother and sister, this friendless child in a
strange land commenced the voyage of life
alone. Though too young, perhaps, to be
much influenced in character by the unpro-
pitious and forlorn circumstances in which his
career began, yet his subsequent life, successful in
an eminent degree, and unmindful of difficulties,
which, however formidable to others, serve but to
stimulate him to conquer them, seems to give evi-
dence that the severe training of his childhood had
given him strength, hardihood and resolution.
Arriving in safety at the city of his birth, after a
protracted voyage of many weeks, he was com-
mitted to the care of his grandmother on the ma-
ternal side, who then resided and still resides at
Waltham, Massachusetts, and by whom he was
reared with tenderness and a watchfulness that could
only be looked for from the mother that gave hhil
birth. This venerable woman, who still survives to
witness the success of her protege, gave him the
advantage of all the education which at that
day was to be acquired in a New England town."
George Francis gives a touching picture of his
childhood in New Orleans, written with a power
that shows, when he chooses to be rational, how
great the talent is he does in truth possess. If all
his loose joints were well screwed together, and
ceased to rattle in that plaguey ridiculous way when
he got into motion, he would have taken a very
different position in his country. Without a par-
ticle of real sympathy by blood, or any other
bond, he desires to walk on the shoulders of the
Irish into the Presidential Chair, and he pursues
this infatuated idea with a waste of toil, talent,
and energy, which, well directed, would make any
other person's fortune. After abusing England to
his heart's content, he expects to be received by
Englishmen with outstretched hand. Otherwise,
what could have induced him to brave the lion in his
den on the Liverpool Stock Exchange. There are
only two ways in which he Can be received in Eng-
land, either with indignation, or with curiosity. He
has too much talent and energy, however misdi-
rected, to be treated with contempt. We are sorry
he was not permitted to leave, as he desired, by the
Scotia, for we are curious to see what his influence
among the Irish in America really is. But the R:-
publicans need not hug themselves on the prospect
of seeing the Irish vote split in favour of George
Francis Train.

Births.

BOND—Os the 2d inst., at 31, Dover-street, Piccadilly, the

Lady Selina Bond, of a son.
BARNARD—On the 29th_u1t,, at Cheltenham, the wife of

Major R. Cary Barnard, of'a son.
SEFTON —On the Ist inst., at Sefton House, the Countess
of Sefton, of a daughter.

Marriages.
HELPS—TIIEOBALD—On the 2d inst., at St. George'S
Hanover-square, the Rev. Charles L. Helps, eldest son of
' Arthur Helps, Esq , D.C.L., Clerk of her Majesty's Privy'
Council, to Emily Theobald, daughter of Jas. Theobald,
Esq., of Hyde Abbey, Winchester.
Roomts—COOPEß—On the Ist inst., at St. Ann's, Totten-.
ham, Annie Beaumont, youngest daughter of H. R 06,09,
Esq., of Tottenham, to Phipps, eldest son of J. Cooper/
of Essex Hall, Walthamstow.