There is no sign of any alleviation in the financial world of 
Europe. We learn by the Niagara that the flow of bullion from 
London to the Continent is more oppressive than ever, and that a 
proposition to raise yet higher the rate of interest had been voted 
down at a meeting of the Directors of the Bank of England by 
only one majority. It is not necessary to say that the cause of the 
crisis is still to be found in France, and the last number of The 
Economist which has reached us depicts the state of things in colors 
of unmixed gloom. 

“The absence of any amelioration,” says that journal, “is virtually an 
aggravation, and unfortunately, moreover, no permanent improvement Is foreseen. 
The contrast between the present month and the corresponding one of last year is 
very painful in nearly every respect, and yet last October the country was engaged 

Led by this lament, we have taken the pains to contrast the 
condition of the Paris Stock Market for October with that of the 
preceding month, and the result of our inquiries may be seen in 
the following table‘: 

30th Sept. 31st Oct. Rise. Fall. 
Three Per Cents Rente ........ 67£. 50c. 66f. 70c. x 80c. 
Four and a Half Per 
GORIS oo. en hskcctvees adi eeche 9OF. olf, lf. 

November 1, 1856.— Fad. : 

30th Sept. 31st Oct. Rise. Fall. 
Bank of France ..................5 4,010f. 3,850. es 160f. 
Crédit Foncier ..........::........+5 600f. 585f. bs 15f. 
Crédit Mobilier ..................5 1,552f. 1,372. 180f. 
Orleans Railroad .................. : 1,267f. 1,241f. cP 26f. 
Northern Railroad ............... 9508. 941f. a Of. 
Eastern Railroad .................. 877. 865f. Fe 12f. 
Paris-Lyons Railroad ........... 1,265f. 1,267f. 2f. 
Mediterranean Railroad ...... : 1,750f. 1,652f. $4 98f. 
Great Central Railroad ........ 610f. 603f. Se 7f. 

During the period from Sept. to Oct. 31, the shares of various 
companies fell as follows*: 

Gas Paris Company ..........ccccsscesssessseseseeeesee suhceean nett oec! 30 f. 
Union des Gaz. cise ss ccna cic ensticeceettass iibtuat unmet nietiomiide $5. -#, 
its: Malitaines 2s: ios. is eeett its nite ho eee ascetics 271 /of. 
Docks: Napoléoniens: sasissaininesdssvncveistcssasetovevnseccedeesveinvzccgeee’ 8} /of. 
Gompagnie Maritime . ......0s0i.scccisasiensacnsnassesseaccasascsuceoaessese 40 f. 
Palais C*ENGUStrie: eciceveceaceans shar cdinesadsevensedzonpsctstasnicusrmasadavens BY he 
Omnibus Company: iiient.dstcisas oad atts eeiereton OO» 4 
Messageries Imperiales sic. veinsssssnssntannsenvaseseesbuaveseicentmnns 50 f 

Nothing could be more ingenious than the manner in which the 
Bonapartist journals of Paris endeavor to account for this 
perpetual fall at the Bourse. Take, for instance, the paper of 
M. de Girardin, the Presse. 

“Speculation,” says this journal, “is still unwilling to renounce its ideas of fall. 
The continual variations of the Crédit Mobilier cause its shares to be regarded as so 
dangerous that many speculators dare not touch them, and confine themselves to 
operating on ‘primes,’ in order to be able to limit beforehand their chances of 
loss.” 

The stringent measures taken by the Bank of France, with a 
view to prevent, or at least to delay, the suspension of cash 
payments, have begun to tell severely on the industrial and 
commercial classes. Indeed, there is now raging a regular war 
between the bona fide commerce and industry, the speculative 
joint-stock companies already at work and the newly-hatched 
schemes about to be established, all of them struggling to carry off 

the floating capital of the country. The inevitable result of such a 
struggle must be the rise of interest, the fall of profits in all 
departments of industry, and the depreciation of all soris of 
securities, even if there existed no Bank of France, nor any drain 
of bullion. That, apart from all foreign influences, this pressure 
on the disposable capital of France must go on increasing, a glance 
at the development of the French railway system sufficiently 
demonstrates. The facts we are about to lay before our readers are 
given by the Journal des Chemins de Fer, which, like the rest of the 
press in that country, can publish nothing but what is admitted by 
the Bonapartist Government itself. On the whole, charters have 
been granted for an aggregate of 5,584 miles of railroad, of which 
only 2,884 miles are completed and in working order. Conse- 
quently there remain still 2,700 miles now being, or about to be, 
constructed. Nor is this all. The Government is constructing the 
Pyrenean lines, and has ordered the construction of new lines 
between Toulouse and Bayonne, Agen and Tarbés, and Mont de 
Marsan and Trabestans, lines amounting to more than 900 miles. 
France is in fact now constructing even a greater extent of 
railroads than she already possesses. The amount of money 
disbursed on her old railroad system is calculated at $300,000,000; 
but then its construction extended over a protracted period—a 
period which saw the rise and fall of three Governments— while 
the lines now chartered are all to be completed within six years at 
the farthest, and to begin their operations in the most critical 
phase of the commercial cycle. The embarrassed companies harass 
the Government for leave to raise money by new emissions of 
shares and bonds. The Government, comprehending that this 
would simply amount to giving leave to further depreciation of the 
old securities in the market, attended by increased disturbance. at 
the Bourse, dares not yield. On the other hand, the money must 
be found; the suspension of the works would not only be 
bankruptcy but revolution. . 

While the demand for capital to start and sustain new 
enterprises at home is thus kept on the increase, the absorption of 
French capital by foreign schemes is by no means abated. It is no 
novelty that French capitalists have vast obligations to fulfill in - 
Spain, Italy, Austria and Germany, and that the Crédit Mobilier is 
busy involving them in new ones at this very moment. Spain 
particularly is now adding to the embarrassments of France, as the 
scarcity of silver there has reached such a pitch that manufacturers 
at Barcelona feel the greatest difficulty in paying the wages of 
their workmen. 

With regard to the Crédit Mobilier, we have already observed * 
that the tendency of that institution by no means corresponds with 
its name. Its tendency is to fix capital, not to mobilize it. What it 
mobilizes is only the titles of property. The shares of the 
companies started by it are, indeed, of a purely floating nature, 
but the capital which they represent is sunk. The whole mystery of 
the Crédit Mobilier is to allure capital into industrial enterprises, 
where it is sunk, in order to speculate on the sale of the shares 
created to represent that capital. As long as the managers of the 
Crédit Mobilier are able to realize premiums on the first emission 
of new shares, they can, of course, afford to look with stoical 
indifference on the general pressure of the money market, the 
ultimate fate of the shareholders, and the difficulties of the 
working companies. .This explains the curious phenomenon that 
while the shares of the,Crédit Mobilier are continually falling at 
the Bourse, its action is as continually extending over Europe. 

Beside the general pressure in the money market, there are 
other causes affecting French manufactures. A great number of 
mills at Lyons are stopped in consequence of the scarcity and high 
price of raw silk. Similar causes are paralyzing affairs at Mulhouse 
and at Rouen. There the high price of cotton has forcibly 
enhanced the price of yarns, while fabrics are difficult of sale, and 
manufacturers unable to obtain their old terms. The consequences 
are, increased suffering and discontent among the workmen— 
especially at Lyons and in the south of France—where a degree of 
_ exasperation prevails, only to be compared with that which 
attended the crisis of 1847. 

From the Bourse, railways, commerce and manufactures, let us 
now turn to French agriculture. The newly published Customs 
Returns of France reveal the fact that the failure of the last 
harvest was far more severe than avowed by the Moniteur? Against 
270,146 quintals of corn imported in September, 1855, 963,616 
quintals were imported in September, 1856, being a difference of 
693,470 quintals above the quantity imported in September, 1855, 
a year of notorious scarcity. It would, however, be a mistake to 
limit to the inundations, bad seasons, and other natural events, the 
causes which are evidently at work in transforming France from a 
corn-exporting to a corn-importing country. Agriculture, never 

highly developed in France, has positively retrograded under the 
present régime. On the one hand we see taxes constantly 
increasing; on the other decreasing labor—great masses of 
laborers being drafted from the land temporarily by war,* and 
permanently by the railway and other public works—with the 
progressive withdrawal of capital from agricultural to speculative 
pursuits. What was called Napoleon’s democratization of credit, 
was in fact but the generalization of stockjobbing. What the Crédit 
Mobilier offered to the middle and higher classes, the Imperial 
subscription loans did for the peasantry. They brought the Bourse 
home to their cottages, emptied them of their private hoardings, 
and carried off the small capitals formerly invested in the 
improvement of agriculture. 

The agricultural distress in France is thus as much the effect of 
the present political system as the offspring of natural disasters. If 
the small peasantry suffer less from low prices than the large 
farmers of England, they suffer, on the other hand,. from the 
dearth of provisions which to the latter often proves a source of 
profit. Hence their disaffection illustrated by incendiary fires, 
which are lamentably frequent, although, by virtue of Imperial 
orders, they are not recorded in the French papers. If the 
peasants, after the Revolution of February,” were exasperated at 
the notion that the new tax of 45 centimes was thrust on them to 
keep up the National Workshops at Paris,’ the present peasantry 
are much more so by the certainty of being charged with taxes on 
their exhausted resources to enable the Parisians to obtain bread 
under cost price. If, now, it be remembered that Napoleon, after 
all, was but the choice of the peasantry, the present revolutionary 
disposition of this class throws quite a new light on the chances of 
the Bonapartist dynasty. To what miserable shifts it is already 
driven, in order to allay and stave off the threatening claims of 
agricultural misery, may be seen from the language of the Prefects 
in their circulars for the “encouragement” of charity. The Prefect 
of the Sarthe, for instance, addresses his Sub-Prefects as follows: 

“You will please to take up, with all zeal and confidence, the task, which is one 
of the finest attributes of administration, viz: to find means of support and 
employment for those citizens who are in want of either, whereby you will concur 
in maintaining public tranquillity. You need not fear that you may find the sources 
of charity dried up, or the private purses exhausted by the sacrifices, however 
enormous they may have been, of preceding years. Proprietors and farmers have 
realized considerable profits for some time past, and being more especially 

interested in the security of the country, they will understand that for them to give 
is an advantage as well as a duty.” 

If to all the preceding causes of disaffection we add the dearth 
of lodgings and provisions at Paris, the pressure on the retail trade 
of the capital, the strikes in different branches of Parisian 
industry, it will be understood why the suppressed freedom of the 
press suddenly breaks forth from the walls of buildings in 
insurrectionary placards. In a private letter we have received from 
a trustworthy correspondent at Paris, it is stated that from the Ist 
to the 12th of October no less than nine hundred arrests took 
place. Some of the causes of these arrests are worth noticing, as 
they offer a striking mark of the uneasiness and anxieties of the 
Government. In one case a man who “does business on the 
Bourse,” as it is called, was arrested for having said that “he saw 
in the Crimean war nothing but many people killed and much 
money wasted;” another, a tradesman, for having pretended that 
“business was as sick as the Government;” a third, because there 
was found on him a song on David d’Angers and the students’; 
a fourth, a Government official, for having published a fly-sheet 
on the financial crisis; a tailor, for having inquired if certain of his 
friends had been arrested, as he was told so; lastly, a workman, for 
conversing with a countryman of his, a gendarme, on the high 
price of provisions, the gendarme interpreting the workman’s 
remarks as hostile to the Government. 

In view of all these facts, it seems hardly possible that French 
commerce and industry should avoid a collapse, attended by 
political events more or less serious, and affecting to a most 
disastrous extent the stability of credit and of business, not only in 
Europe, but in America as well. The rushing movement toward 
this abyss cannot but be accelerated by the gigantic speculation in 
Russian railroads in which the Crédit Mobilier, in conjunction with 
many of the leading banking firms of Europe, have now 
embarked. 

Written on about November 7, 1856 Reproduced from the newspaper 
Tribune, No. 4866, November 22, 1856