money to be paid into the Imperial treasury for railroads and mines has, according to contract, to be handed over in specie, causing a drain on the resources of the Crédit Mobilier of above $1,000,000 every month till February, 1858. On the other hand, the monetary pressure is so severely felt by railroad contractors in France, that the Grand Central has been compelled to dismiss five hundred employés and fifteen thousand workmen on_ the Mulhouse section, and the Lyons and Geneva Company has been obliged to curtail or suspend its operations. For divulging these facts, the Indépendance belge has been twice seized in France. With this irritability of the French Government at any disclosure of the real situation of French commerce and industry, it is curious to note the following passage, escaped from the lips of M. Petit, the substitute of the Procureur General, upon the recent reopening of the courts at Paris.

“Consult statistics and you will find some interesting information upon the present tendencies of trade. Bankrupt ies increase every year. In 1851 there were 2,305; in 1852, 2,478; in 1853, 2,671; and in 1854, 3,691. The same increase is to be noted for fraudulent as for simple bankruptcies. The increase of the former has been, since 1851, at the rate of 66 per cent, and that of the latter 100 per cent. As to the frauds committed upon the nature, the quality, and the quantity of things sold, and the employment of false measures and weights, these have augmented in 1853, 7,074; and in 1854, 7,831.”

It is true that, in the face of these phenomena on the continent, we are assured by the British press that the worst of the crisis 1s over, but we seek in vain for conclusive evidence of such a fact. We do not find it in the raising of discount to seven per cent by the Bank of England; nor in the last report of the Bank of France, which not only exhibits internal proofs of having been cooked, but even formally shows that in spite of the severest restriction upon loans, advances, discounts, and emission of notes, the Bank has been unable to check the efflux of bullion or to dispense with the premium on gold. But however that may be, it is certain that the French Government is far from partaking in the comfortable views which it takes care to spread both at home and abroad. At Paris it is known that the Emperor’. has not recoiled from. the most stupendous monetary sacrifices to keep, during the last six weeks, the Rente above 66, it being not a mere conviction, but a settled superstition with him, that the fall below 66 will ring the death knell of the empire. It is evident that the French differs in this

4 Napoleon III.— Ed.

138 = -Karl Marx

respect from the Roman Empire—since the one feared death from the advance of the barbarians while the other fears it from the retreat of the stockjobbers.

Written on about November 21, 1856 Reproduced from the newspaper