Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1883-01-24
From our regular correspondent
Our European Letter,
LONDON, Eng. Jan. 9, IS

Our European Letter,
LONDON, Eng. Jan. 8, '83.
The past year closed in most orderly
quiet and common place fashion while it
has been marked by one or two financial
episodes of sufficiently stirring kind to
give II prominent rank among tue period
of "storm and stress" through which the
monetary world has had to pass. 1882
opened with seeming fair promise, but
before the first month had passed the air
became heavily charged with disquieting
rumors of coming storm, and in Febru-
airy the great speculative bubble that had
been blown in France during the course
of three preceding years suddenly burst
with the collapse Of the Union Generate, a
politico.roigious banking institution
which was formed ostensibly to promote
financial and industrial undertakings all
over Europe; which in reality lived life
OF sham prosperity by gambling in its
own stock on the bourse, and which has
within the last few days virtually passed
from public notice with the trial and
convictions of its chairman and manager.
1t convulsed the continental bourses,
ruined thousands of families, and checked
all great financial operations for the rest
of the year. In the middle of the year,
the wound that had begun to heal was
reopened by an outbreak of a rebellion in
Egypt, and stock exchange relapse was
again precipitated. Since then affairs
have steadily mended; but it cannot as
yet be said that the recovery has passed
beyond the mere convaleseent stage. The
course of general business which resisted
the speculative collapse in France subse-
quently received check from the political
troubles in Egypt, and the foreign trade
of this country, which had until then
shown marked expansion, gradually
waned until it reached stationery stage,
where for the moment it now rests. In
the home departments of business, how
ever, there has been a we'll sustained
activity, that has given full and remuner.
alive employment to the industrial classes,
lightened the pauper bill and helped to
swell the deposits in the post office savings
banks. The two great exceptions to the
prosperity of trade as a whole have been
the cotton trade and the Mincing lane
markets which have been depressed in
sympathy with the quietude in the east
and the weak and uncertain state of the
silver market, and the declining condition
of the Indian exchange.
The fire fiend is abroad in England. In
every paper we take up, metropolitan or
provincial, there is mention of confa-
grafton. Captain Shaw's merry men
have had busy time of it. When an
epidemic Of flames forces the subj ,ct upon
the seemingly unwilling attention of men
of business, we hear much for the time
about the existing means and appliances
for the prevention and extinction of fire
But the cry soon dies away again, and
men of business proceed to jog along
after their old fashion, in lanc,ed security,
needless Of the dangers to which their
establishments are daily subjected, until
perhaps the devodring element creeps
nearer their own doors aud giving them ii
taste of its ravages. wakes them from
their lelhargy.
The rupture between the Lanotrv Lily
and Mrs. Labouchere in New York has
caused an immense amount of gossip in
certain circles here have been over
whelmed with applications for American
journals by acquaintanoes Of both ladies'
who hope to read piauant details that the
more reticent English journals have with
held. Mrs. Labouchere, by the time
these lines are in print, will have arrived
home, and for a month to come she will
be the "lioness'' of dinner parties and tea
fights, and will have brilliant opportunities
of relating the little Aistorietts of the split
Sir Hugh Allan, Bart, the we'll known
founder of the Allan line of mail steamers
between Liverpool and Quebec, died
recently in Edinburgh at the age of 70.
His death will be a sourc' of regret to all
classes of the American travelling COM
munity, for whose comfort and conven-
fence he spent the best part of his long
and useful life, and especially throughout
the commercial circles of the United
States and Canada, where his influences
for good was widely felt land thoroughly
appreciated. AUGUST.