The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1870-04-29
5W latel | v N E y W..
THE MI1L!oNAIREs or NEW YORK,

Nothing strikes US so strongly in this
gold crisis in New York as the enormous
and unrestrained power of the new Ameri-
can plutocracy. They seem to be rising to
a position which, in the extent of the in
fuence it confers, is without parallel in
the histories of missionaries, or is parallel
ed only by that of the few Roman families
which united to hereditary station in the
republic the command of masses of treasure
and armies of debtors There are men as
rich in England, and men, perhaps, as I'M
scrupulous in Europe, but for men as unre-
strained in the use of their power, as de .
tiant of opinion, of the law, of their own
reputation, of all that limits the applica-
ton of extraordinary means, we must seek
in the East or in the history of the old Pa
gan world. A Roman Senator would de-
stroy a province to recover his interest on
loan, or raise civil war to rid himself
of his debts, and the American "ring" lead
ers seem willing to force on national
bankruptcy, or ruin an army of sharehold-
ers, as mere incidental strokes in some
grand "operatioE," or rather game, for in
many cases they seem actuated by deter
mination to win at least as much as by any
thirst for profit. What does Mr.. Wander
bilt-with, it is said, e15,000,000 sterling
want with the few scores of thousands
he makes when in some huge railway cam
paign he brushes q thousand families {?
Yet he brushes them. In Europe first
class millionaire of that sort would dread
financial disturbance as he would dread an
earthquake. In America he makes one.
The excitement, the notoriety, seem to be
the temptations of these men, even more than
the profit and the whole scene suggests
that in America, as in Rome, safety comes
quick to the very rich; that for the man of
millions life has few interests that the hun
ger for excitement has reached the height
orgy, or huge mad gambling perhaps the
most dangerous sypmtom which commu-
nifty can exhibit. The Operation" which
has recently conYulsed New York and sha-
ken American credit throughout the world
was not in itself a very extraordinary one.
American currency is paper but all duties
must be paid in gold, and good many con-
tracts must be fulfilled in one way or anoth-
er by transfers of bullion. A few rich men,
therefore, thought that if they could get
possession Of all the available gold,
they could get their own price for it,
and the gold in stock being everywhere a
very limited quantity, they fancied them
selves rich enough to do it. Given a few
men sufficiently confident in one another,
and sufficiently rich to begin the game,
pledging their gold as they got it, and there
is nothing very extraordinary or very far
seeing in such plan, which was, indeed
very imperiectly organized, the ring having
either forgotten or been deceived by the
largest bullion holder in the country, the
Treasury Of the United States. The really
extraordinary thing is that men of such
wealth and such capacity should have been
willing to run such risk, and endangel
the commercial safety of the Union in such
spirit of recklessness. Gamblers do very
mad things sometimes, but in Europe vast
wealth seems to sober men, and the city
could no more think of the Rothschilds OF