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COMMERCIAL.
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liberal communal law . The two first are already in part carried out . The two last remain in abeyance ; and although the future welfare of the Austrian monarchy depends upon their accomplishment there is but little disposition evinced on ^ part of the Government to fulfil the promise held
There is a prospect of some trouble with the Protestants of Hungary and the neighbouring countries . The Imperial patent issued on the 1 st ult ., of which The Leader gave an analysis , was extolled by the Jesuit and Ultramontane press as a praiseworthy , and conciliatory measure of reform ; , which would be received with gratitude by the Hungarian Protestants . It was difficult , as usual , fof the mere news-seeking reader to penetrate the darkly-intricate sentences of the official document , but a careful study soon enabled any one to perceire that the pretended boons offered were nothing more than so many pitfalls . While pretending to restore to the Protestants
their self-government in Church and school affairs , which they had enjoyed from the sixteenth century till 1848-49 , the Government recommended the Imperial officials to keep a strict watch over both churches and schools , which were made subordinate to the Imperial authorities . The consequence is , as might have been expected , the Protestants reject the pretended boon . On the 27 th of last month a congress of the Protestants of the Theiss district ¦ was held , under the presidency of the representative of the seven free towns of the Zips ; It was unanimously resolved to beseech the Emperor in a petition
to restore the Protestant Church its guaranteed and original rights , or , at all events , to the position it held prior to 1848 , because they could not accept the conditions of the patent , which assumed the right of dictating in the ecclesiastical an d scholastic affairs of the Protestants of Hungary , without the consent of the Synod of . the country . Besides , the Government of the Emperor or King have pretended to reserve a power to which they never had a elainiviz ., the selection of the school-books , the language through which the children should be instructed , and the course of study . .
The Protestants of Hungary are a brightexample for Germany . The supervision of the schools by the authorities and . the censorship of ttlie press nullify , of course , the knowledge of reading and the use of school-books . The affairs of ITessia have come under the consideration of the J ? e . deral Diet since tlie vacation . The result is expected to be a new constitution constructed from the old constitution , which the people of Hessia want in toto , and the last one concocted by Austria , Prussia , and the Elector together , which the people do not want at all .
The celebrated composer , Ludwig Spohr , died last Saturday evening at Cassel , where he had been settled since 1822 ; He was in his seventy-sixth year .
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The Great Smegwtjs Failure . — The Berlin Banking Gazette of the 21 st inst . expresses doubts as to the contemplated retirement of Baron Stieglitz being fulfilled . It is said that the Emperor is believed to be fuTly sensible of the services the Baron has rendered to Russian finance , as well as of the different results that might under his auspices have attended the recent loan , and that some arrangement is therefore likely to be adopted to induce him to continue business . Should such be the case it is assumed that M . "Von . Kniajewitsch , the Finance
Minister , who has been the personal opponent of the Baron , will withdraw from office . Tirade ov tiie Month . —The Board of Trade returns for the month are again satisfactory . The exports for September were more than eleven and a half millions sterling in valuo , nearly one million more than in the same month last year , and half , a million more than in September , 1857 . Taking , too , the number of vessels employed in the shipping trade , the figures show a groat increase of tonnage , and make one wonder what the shipping interest can mean by their cry of distress .
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LOCH KATRINE IN GLASGOW . Glasgie ' e just a' right the noo She has gat Lech Katrine brought her ; Ever she had mountain dew , Now she rlns wi' mountain water . Hcch the blessiu ' , ho the boon To ilka drouthie Glasgie bodie ! Sin' thero ' e water in the toun , Ouro cncucli to male * its toddic . i Glasglo duels , n truth ye'll learn , New to moay a Scot , I ' m tulnkin' ; Water , aiblina , ye'll discern , Was na gi ' cn alane for driukin . ' Hands and face ye'll scrub at least , Frao one until anlther Monday , Glf nae Sabbatarian beast Stap your water-works on Sunday . —Punch
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GUARANTEES AND SUBSIDIES . TlNGLISH management , it is said , has become * - * so unfavourably known in the share market that foreign railways placed under it , though they have a guaranteed rate of profit , are sure to fall to a discount . This is at once new and unexpected . English management is decried . It niay be a consequence of the guarantee system . At least , such a system must induce mismanagement . The guarantee in most cases is sure , in the first instance , to drive the shares up to premium . Then the men who have projected the undertaking , placed their friends on the directory , given the works into the hands of some favoured engineer ,
may find some other and better employment for their capital , and leave the concern in the hands of those who have entered it only to serve some sinister purpose of their own . As the Times shows , the gurrantee is a lure for shareholders . They , however , cannot immediately acquire a sufficient knowledge of the concern to take it into their own hands , if they have the " will ? and it is sure to become a mere job . Some projectors , some directors , some engineers , and some contractors , by
this mode of going to work , have acquired large fortunes ; and some of the noblest and most useful enterprises that ever were undertaken have become ruinous as commercial speculations . The guarantee system lias ensured the success of Jobbing , and has extended it . We cannot say it is the parent of jobbing ; tins is inherent in the national character , affects equally corrupt electors , corrupt representatives , and corrupt ministers . It is another proof , however , that Government cannot even so far interfere with business as to give
one portion of it this apparently feeble encouragement without doing mischief . KOYAL MAIL PACKET COMPANT . There is another mode in which Government interference has latterly done great mischief to shipping and trade . It was beguiled and flattered * some twenty-eight years aero , to < rive a subsidy to a company , to enable it to establish and carry on mail-packet communication with the United States . The sum granted was considerably more that a fair remuneration for carrying letters and mails under a system of competition . From subsidising one company it subsidised another and another , and now the amount of subsidies it pays to different companies for carrying mails , &c , is very little short of £ 1 , 000 , 000 a year .
One of tlie companies which gets a very large sum— £ 270 , 000 , per annum , payable quarterlythe RQyal Mail Company ¦ , announced last week that its profit for the half-year had been £ 132 , 581 ; but many deductions have to he made , and the sum left to be appropriated to dividends was only . £ 30 , 000 . This is only the ninth-part of the sum received from the Government , or , doubling it for the year , , £ 60 , 000 ; we may then say that the real earnings of the Company , exclusive of the Government grant , are £ 210 , 000 a-year , less than nothing . At the same time we are assured by Mr . Campbell , speaking at Holy head , that this payment is niiido a
pretext for checking steam boat speed . From these facts it is quite plain that this particular subsidy—and , no doubt , the case is the same with other subsidies—keeps alive inefficiency and incojnpetency . They stifle enterprises which would pay , to keep companies in existence which manage so badly that they do not pay . ¦ J Cliis is hot all . The grant of these subsidies by our Government induced the American G-overnment to make similar grants , the consequence of which was that several more steam-vessels were placed on the Hno between America aud England than could find profitable employment : and the
American vessels , in spite of the subsidy , having caused a ruinous loss to their owners , wore withdrawn , as wore the subsidies granted by the American Government . Excited by our pernicious example the American Government , in order to secure the superiority of American steam-ships , inflicted by its bountieB immense mischief on American shipping . Under this foroing system the shipping , both of the United States and of England , has become somewhat redumdant . More ships have been built to catch a share of these bounties than trade could employ , and the shipping interest has suffered deeply from tho undue competition introduced . > wto
it by this unwarranted interference . Of the shipping interest , it is true , as well as of other interests , that the rate of profit in it must , on the average , be generally equal . The result , therefore , of these bounties was to increase too fast the number of new and most improved ships , and by undue competition to lower the average rate ol profit amongst shipowners .
MR . GLADSTONE . If it were possible—which it is not—to place any confidence in the declarations of our statesmen—be they who they may—we might hope that this ruinous system would receive its deathblow from the Chancellor of the Exchequer . A ( the Holyhead festival he pathetically bewailed tht readiness of the originators of enterprises to resori to an assault on the public purse . " The old principle , " he said , " that the assistance of Government should never be extended to private enterprise , unless under circumstances of rigid and extreme necessity , had been greatly departed from he added that toe
of late years . I believe , " , " a ready resort to the public purse has been mischievous , and has operated as an alsohtfe discouragement to enterprise . " But such sentiments have been expressed over and over again by all our statesmen . They have thundered against bounties and discriminating duties , and even in thundering against them have re-enacted them . These subsidies and guarantees are , in fact , but another name for discredited bounties . Our statesmen , therefore , are not to be trusted when they can get an increase of patronage and power by departing from a principle .
Mr . Gladstone was palpably in error when he attributed the disposition to attack the public purse to the commercial failure of railway enterprise . It began long before railways were introduced , and was much encouraged by some , of Mr . Gladstone ' s predecessors , who were loudest in their professions of free trade . He is also obviously in . a muddle about the advantages of legislation , and encourages appeals for assistance to the Legislature by magnifying its power . He said , "I do not believe , in the whole history of the world , an instance can be found , either of an age or a nation ,
in which it has been graciously conceded to a . Legislature to do so much for the benefit of a people committed to its charge as it has been permitted by the British Parliament to do in the present era by the changes which it has circumspectly and wisely , but boldly and effectually , introduced in our commercial code . " We should have been prompt to tell Mr . Gladstone that the Legislature was compelled to make these changes , and that the national prosperity is the result of skill and industrv which the Legislature had no hand
in improving . But we find this ingenious and subtle gentleman admitting , in another part of the same speech , that his course , as Chancellor of the Exchequer , "is determined by what is felt by the mass of the community , and especially by those intelligent and really governing classes of whom he had an important portion before him . " He admitted , too , that the ministry " had a noble master in the British nation . Now , unless he means to assert that tho Legislature is the British nation , as contradistinguished from the tho public and the Ministers . Mr . Gladstone declares , in one ami the noble master
same breath , that the nation is the of the ministry , which guides tho Legislature , and that the noble master is , ut the same time , committed "to the charge" of his ministry-guided Legislature . How tho nation can be at once the master of the Government , and under its charge , requires an Oxford education to comprehend . We can see only that when the " noble master" has had sense , sp irit , and right knowledge enough to take its affairs into its own hands and compel the Legislature , led by tho administration , or the nar tion ' s ignoble servants , to abstain from initiating only a BinalPportion of tho mischief it continually muiotB on " its charge , " then the nation prospers amazingly ; and politicians like Mr . Gladstone , who would have prevented it if they could , assume to themselves the credit of having bestowed benenta
on the nation . It is tho etill restricted industry of the people which gives us woaUh . --not legislation . * or such reasons wo cannot possibly plaoo any conudontoe tn Mr . Gladstone ' s present professions , and we cannot hope that he will put an end to tlie " guarantee " and " subsidy " systems , though lie acknowledges
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COMMERCIAL .
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So . 501 . Oct . 29 , 1859-3 . THE LEADER . ' 120 5
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 29, 1859, page 1205, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2318/page/17/
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