The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1858-01-12

SDAY, JANUARY Il, ID
bills on imaginary persons they cheat royalty,
and fail imperislly. All this is ahead of Va.
Were it not for our railway companies which we
will back against any concerns or individuals
in the world for downright barefaced frauds.
we should have to confess that we cannot hold
a candle to John Bull in the way of rsscality
The Results OF the Recent Crasas-Posting
up tho Books.
We publish to-day in another column a mass
of statistics and information relative to the
great revulson that has recently passed over
the commercial world, and which, though still
prevailing to some extent in the distant points
it is to be hoped has already exhausted its fury
on the active centres of trade. The facts and
figures we present open wide field for reflection
and comment, but we shall only group together
the great points of interest and follow out
some of the higher truths which they force upon
our mind.
The great accumulation of speculative values
which our own market presented long time
since-railways built by loans competing with
each other with ruinous extravaganza of ex-
penditure, and paying dividends with borrowed,
not earned, money operators in cotton, sugar,
coffee, grain, and many other staples, carrying
large amounts of produce at prices which
left profit of from fifty to one hundred
per cent to the producer; new towns and
cities laid out upon lands held at
immense prospective values, for which
promises to pay had been given ships
of gigantic size, sufficient to do the carrying
trade of half the world at single voyage
built upon credit; the pockets of everybody
full of paper, and rate of living unsur
passed in extravaganza based thereon, all
tended to convince US, many months since, that
the state of things then existing was fictitious
and must very soon melt away. The ratio of
profit was largely out of level and the immu-
table laws of trade demanded that reaction
should come. 1t was then that we expressed
our opinions fearlessly and honestly, and fore
told what our judgment and our experience as
sured us must come to pass.
The revulsion began here, but soon spread to
all the great centres of trade, for all were in
volved in same vortex of speculative values.
England, Germany and Northern Europe have
experienced its dire effects with greater degrees
of intensity than France, Spain and Southern
Europe, which have in a measure escaped. The
immunity of these countries is owing to the
fact that they are not commercial nations in
the sense in which the others are so. In Italy
and Spain credit is a thing hardly known, and
the same is true, though in less degree, of
France. These are in great measure cash
trading countries, and that system of distribut-
ing the staples of commerce to their producers
through the kiting system that obtains among
the other nations, is almost unknown. The
consequence is that their transactions are con-
fined to the smaller operations of commerce,
and to their own people, they participating in
a small degree in the labors and the profits of
exchanging the productions of other nations.
Our tables showing the effects Of the revulsion
are made up from variety of sources. Those
Of the United States are the tables of Messrs. b.
Douglass & Co., whose mercantile agencies in
this city and throughout the country enable
them to present view of the disasters here
more complete than can probably be presented
by any other country in the world. Those of
Great Britain and the Continent have been
gathered by ourselves with great labor from
our files of European journals. They are in
tended TO present view of the commercial dis
asters, and therefore exclude railways, Credit
Mobiliers and all other stockjobbing losses
From them we learn that one thousand millions Of
dollars Of hdt was supposed TO BE- property has passed
array, there being about oneiourth of that
amount represented by assets which in them
selves are not free from doubt. This annihila-
ton of commercial wealth is distributed as fol-
lows
United StNes and Canada. $500 900 900 sl44 900 900
Great Britain .,........, 400 100000 10000 900
Continent Of surope...... 800 600 900 10000 900
Total. 900 900 900 >2s4 900 900
To this sum we may add, in this country alone,
humiliation in value in railroad and other curi
ties amounting 10 not less than three hundred millions
In Europe the final addition of these losses has
not yet been reached, but we can hardly sup
pose that in England it will bear the same pro-