The Sun. — 1853-03-23 (London, England)

UNITED STATES.  The mail by the steamer Arabia was delivered in the City yesterday morning, and the contents of the letters and papers now received are of more than ordinary interest. Speculation in the stock markets, which for some time past has assumed something of the character of a mania, has at length been checked to some extent. Business had suddenly stopped, and prices had as suddenlydeclined. The money market immediately became very tight, and the rates of exchange had fallen. After a slight reaction, the panic had again commenced with greater violence, and a further fall in quotations took place with numerous forced sales of stock. On this subject the New York Herald observes :  " The movements in financial affairs during the past week have not been of a character to sustain publiC confidence ; but, on the contrary, they have had a tendency to destroy the speculative bubble which was becoming so rapidly inflated. They have opened the eyes of the community to the rottenness of our banks, to the enormous expansion of their lines of discount, to the precarious position of the entire credit system of the country, and speculators may well pause in their mad career. Very few appear to have the most remote idea of the immense amount of public indebtedness. For several years we have been going on piling up millions upon millions of liabilities, until we have got a load that may crush every important interest of the country to the earth. " It will be borne in mind that we have for some time anticipated a revulsion in our money market, and that we have reason to apprehend serious financial embarrassments, for which there can be no remedy other than the sad process of extensive contraction. When we reflect on the immense expansion of credits, in real estate, railroad bonds, and bank facilities, which now immeasurably exceed that of 1836—when everything presents the most flattering appearance of the greatest prosperity—the opportunity is afforded us to look with some distrust upon the permanency of our present position. It is said that we are in the almost daily receipt of millions of gold from California and that therefore we can sustain any amount of credit ; but when we reflect that this system of expansion has already been pushed to thousands of millions of indebtedness, in the form and shape of credits, which, becoming suspected, can turn to no support independent of that on which it has already been erected, cautious and prudent capitalists have some signs of the future for fearful apprehension." This journal attributes the crisis to the unrestrained and unlimited amount of capital embarked in the formation of Banking Companies, which, by an excess of credit, necessarily creates unhealthy speculations which sooner or latter end in ruin. It remarks as follows : "At the present moment we have more than double of what existed in 1836, and which proved so fatal in 1837, when the banks, with almost one accord, suspended specie payments, carrying through the preparatory contraction ruin and dismay. Our banks have already exhibited signs of distress, and had to seek relief from those who were, in self-defence, compelled to yield assistance, by culling from its discounted paper the most apparently responsible securities. This is not the only inistinankc! wAhnereintheteitcurtyjohnaosfbareenea,tecHmagmelp me, Cassius, sbiuust, or ithl apvaesstotohmrmouanghy bthanekseafteowo emakneonhinpgapienrZcapital----an., what is much worse, too little concert of f to arrive r geencelate., ra de t ho action or intelligent confidence. If the news hereafter London should exhibit a greater the fatal end we anticipateost fearful consequences. present itself with .the depression of the specie assetstoofwtteßeeanhkeroefwEinligleaonodn, an gourse of gradual and distrust, they are pursuing a c Already roenardpyrdesoenoturpoexeiptieorniered:bbaeniknersthdnosubintotehneaetdabwitthy L cautious contraction.  DISTRESSING SUICIDE AT BURNLEY.—On Saturday morning last, Mr. Willis, clerk in the Craven Bank, at Burnley, left the bank about nine o'clock, apparently as well and cheerful as he had been for some time previously. Not returning so soon as he was expected, diligent search and inquiry were made for him during the remainder of the day, but no intelligence could be obtained as to the direction he had taken. On Sunday morning, a man who was gathering nettles in a field near Bank Hall, observed an open book lying near the door of an outhouse, and, on looking in, saw Mr. Willis lying on the floor with his throat cut, and quite dead. A loaded pistol, a razor, and some poison were found upon his person. Mr. Willis had been suffering for a considerable period from severe organic disease of the bowels, accompanied with extreme depression of spirits, and it is believed that he committed the rash act in a :1t of temporary insanity.—Preston Pilot. BORNEo.—Recent advices from Borneo Proper mention that Pangeran Mumeen had quietly succeeded to the throne, and had been prayed for at the mosque as Sultan Abdul Mumeen. His accession had given very general satisfaction, and he had received the congratulations of the British authorities at Labuan, 

Article type: Incident