The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-05-02 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, MAY 2, 1848.

IT is absolutely appalling to contemplate the
enormous sacrifice of capital and property, which
has been caused throughout Europe by the recent
revolutionary movements, and which is increasing
in amount day by day. Yet it is a lesson which
we must enforce upon the minds of that class
amongst the people of this more favoured land—
happily few in number—who sympathise with
anarchy,. and can see only objects for imitation in
giddy changes, which are pregnant with destruc-'
tion to those who have madly rushed into them.
The public, and especially the working classes,
must be made to see—they cannot be too often re-
minded of the fact—that there can be no violent
shock given to the institutions of a country, with-
out its bringing with it enormous suffering to the
industry of that country ; that in all convulsions of
the social fabric it is the worthless and unprin-
cipled who generally profit, and the striving and
honest who are crushed to the dust. They must
be impressed with the fact that the fate of industry
is inextricably bound up in, and dependant upon,
the security of property; and that anything which
tends tounsettle and weaken the confidence of the
possessors of that property, tends to decrease pro-
portionately the value of the working man's only
possession—his labour. Were these truths all re-
membered by the masses, political agitation would
be shunned as a social pestilence ; and it would be
found that few revolutions are worth the price we
pay for them.
Turn we to the lesson which is being taught us
in republican France, as summed up in an able ar-
ticle in Blackwood's Magazine for this month ;

One of the most instructive facts as to the ruinous ef-
fect of the late Revolution on the best interests of French
industry, is to be found in the progressive and rapid de-
dine in the value of all French securities, public and pri-
vate, since it took place. It distinctly appears that two-
thirds of the capital of France has been destroyed since
the Revolution, in the short space of six weeks ! Attend
to the fall- in the value of the public funds during that
brief but disastrous period :
French 3 per cents. 5 per cents.
Fr. Ct. Fr. Ct.
1825 76 34 July 23 1817 69 0 July 29
1829 86 16 Dec. 5 1821 90 60 Nov. 2
1830 85 35 Jan. 18 1822 95 0 Sept. 5
1831 70 50 Dec. 2 1824 104 80 Feb. 5
1834 85 .50 Nov. 30 1828 109 0 Sept. 4
1840 86 65 July 22 1829 110 65 Mar. 4
1844 85 65 Dec. 22 1831 98 30 Dec. 15
1845 86 40 May 20 1835 110 36 Feb. 4
1846 85 0 Feb. 28 1837 111 0 Sept. 5
1847 80 30 Jan. 2 1841 117 5 Sept. 4
1848 47 0 Mar. 15 1844 126 30 Mar. 4
1848 41 27 Mar. 28 1847 119 40 Feb. 22
1858 35 67 April 1 1848 116 75 Feb. 22
1848 34 64 April 5
1848 97 50 { fell to 80
1848 33 10 Aprill4 Mar. 7.
1848 65 80 April 2
1848 51 0 April 1
_ _

La Presse, March 12, and Times since that date.
The value of railway stock and bank shares has declined
in a still more alarming proportion. Bank shares, which
in 1824 sold for 3400 francs, are now selling 900 francs
—or little more than A FOURTH of their former value.
Railway stock is unsaleable, being marked out for confis-
cation. Taking one kind of stock with another, it may
safely be affirmed that TWO-THIRDS of the capital of
France has perished since the Revolution, in the short
space of seven weeks. The fruit of thirty-three years'
peace, hard labour, and penurious saving, has disappeared
in seven weeks of anarchical transports ! !
France, then, has got a Republic, in embryo at
least—the skeleton of a settled government, which
her doctrinaires have yet, in fear and trembling, to
put together, and to fill up with flesh and a skin,
amidst the howling dictation of the armed mob of
Paris. They have exchanged the rule of a king in
his dotage for the tyranny of an infuriated demo-
cracy, ready to destroy to-day what they put toge-
ther yesterday; and as likely, to-morrow, to be
dancing, with the hideous glee of maniacs, round
the ashes of the fabric upon which yesterday they
were supplicating blessings and consecrations. See
what they have paid for the change ! " Two-thirds
of the capital of France—the fruits of thirty-three
years of peace, hard labour and industrious saving
—have disappeared in seven weeks of anarchical
transports IP '
But is this all ? Alas, it is not. Where at this
moment is the industry of France? Where is its
commerce ? Where its manufacturing activity ?
Suspended all; fled with the confidence of the
capitalist, or crippled with the virtual confiscation,
with which every. description of property has been
visited. At the present moment it is computed
that 70 to 80,000 persons, in Paris alone, have to
be found employment in the public workshops
at a cost of £150,000 per month, in addition to
100,000 persons, employed as temporary soldiers at
nearly double that expense. Throughout the pro•
vinces a similar state of things is in existence. The
profitable employment of industry is the exception ;
anarchy, poverty, and suffering the rule. The little
property of the working man, the comforts of his
homestead, his savings, his furniture and his very
clothing are vanishing from within his reach. How
long can this go on. Even with the threatened
measure of spoliation, or, in French phrase, the
" absorption" by the government of all railways,
bank stock, mines, canals, and other sources of
revenue, and description of property, it must soon
have an end. No government can support the task
of providing for a whole people, precipitated into
anarchy and idleness.
If we look further throughout the other countries
of Europe, the spectacle presented is little less
saddening. Germany is convulsed to its centre, its
commerce is suspended, the credit of its merchants
prostrated, its manufactures declining, and its
artizans unemployed. The shuttle has ceased to
fly, the mine to be worked, and the plough and
the spade have been laid aside for the musket and
the sword. Confusion, fear and international jea-
lousies prevail everywhere. The dream of a
universal peace, in which industry, commerce, and
social improvement were to progress hand in hand,
has vanished ; and we see in its stead the govern-
ments and the people of half the civilised world
standing armed and ready to plunge into a devas-
tating period of universal warfare. And all this
for what ? It would puzzle the wisest of mankind
to give an answer, which is not degrading to civili-
zation. The Germanic nations must, forsooth,
follow the dreamy imaginings of their poets and
have " a fatherland," to be governed under one
separate rule. The Scandinavian race must be
shut out from the German soil. Italy must have,
what it never had at any period since the flood,
" unity and an Italian empire," and even, to come
nearer home, Celtic Ireland must become, what it
never was in the memory of man, an independent
and purely Celtic nation. The mixture of races,
which Providence has decreed ; the gradual fusing
of nations into each other; the assimilation of
national sympathies; the growth of those mutual
ties and sympathies which the spread of civilization
and Christianity was to create : all these powerful
elements of human improvement are to be annihi-
lated, at the dictation of a few visionary philoso-
phers, and restless and reckless disturbers, who
would be crushed in a single day's exercise of the
returned good sense of mankind.
That such a day will come soon, however, we
are by no means assured. Our prayer and our
trust is only that such good sense at the present,
or any other crisis will not desert the British people.
We possess already institutions which have, for
centuries, been the admiration of the world; which
have enabled us to grow in fame and power, until
we have been placed indisputably in pre-eminence
among nations. We possess, under those institu-
tions, by the favour of God, a greater share of
national liberty, comfort, and security of life and
property than has been conferred upon any people ;
and we should be madmen to peril those blessings,
by rushing into the pursuit of unknown and untried
good. It is true that some classes amongst us
may labour under what they deem undue and
unjust pressure of our social system; that here a
stone in the' noble fabric may require rounding off,
and there a buttress or a pillar may require increas-
ed support. All this amelioration will, however,