14 OCTOBER 1854, Page 14

_ " SPECULATION " A COMMERCIAL OFFENCE.

IT is with no invidious purpose that we ask whether such "-difficulties" as those that have occurred at Liverpool ought trs have occurred at all? The question is not one of a per- sonal kind ; it refers to an entire class of commercial liabili- ties. The history of almost all these recent cases appears to be strongly marked, and in nearly all that have been made public the American element is powerful. The transmission of bills by a gentleman in New York who was not authorized to draw those bills—close connexion with the very precarious and speculative trade in grain—large speculations in shipowning—are distinctly stated as the practical or proximate reasons for the suspension of payment. One case is very remarkable. The liabilities were set down at 700,000/. ; the house which was under liabilities to that amount is said to have been quite solvent ; but, however solvent, the event has shown that there was some difficulty inmeetieg the total amount of liabilities within the time for a large.preportion of them to reach maturity. The house haft been saved from the conse- quences of the suspension, and it will go on by favour of an ar- rangement under which bills to the extent of 400,000/. were re- turned, the purchase-price of shipping property for which these bills had been given. We are only commenting upon what is be- fore the public. What, then, appears to be the cue ? A house is under liabilities to the extent of 300,0001.; there is some chance that these liabilities might be pressed with so much inconvenience as to approach suspension of payments; yet the house subject to such contingencies issues 400,000/. in bills for the purchase of shipping property. We have no doubt that an explanation can be given ; but what explanation could do away with these simple facts as they are broadly stated ? There is only too much reason to believe that other irregularities are creeping into our trade, in some cases the very questionable importations from the sharp commercial atmosphere of America. How is it that one house is publicly reported to have tolerated for five months the drawing of bills by an agent at New York without authority P The very circulation of such a report shows an amount of toleration in our commercial public which is as sur- prising as it is unhealthy. Underwriters, it is said with too much probability, hesitate to lend their names to the shipping of some firms ; and the circulation of such a statement even as a report is another sign of unhealthiness which we desire to see corrected. We have been in the habit of praising British " enterprise," and we may praise it still ; but speculation has ceased to be a legitimate branch of that enterprise. What is speculation ? It consists in guessing at probabilities. There was a time when active-minded and keen-sighted men might legitimately trade in guessing at probable successes. In those days, " adventurers" might plunge into mines, or into trading combinations with foreign parts, or into untried paths of commerce where a demand was to be created ; but it is a barbaric dishonesty to continue a trade in guessing, when commerce is now supplied with every machinery for obtaining correct information, and for ascertaining the wants which were formerly guessed. There are few important regions open to our trade in which we have not experienced persons well capable of reporting on the exact state of the requirements of the resident population, and on the means of paying for things they require. The elecixic telegraph has converted the greater part of the civilized world into one market. Grain in the North of Scotland may be bought and sold in the London market by telegraph ; bargains can be made in any European capital; there is not a want for a single article of manufacture which can arise in any part of the two worlds without the want's being accurately expressed wherever it could be supplied. The season for guessing, therefore, is past. The legitimate scope of enterprise and intelli- gence for the capitalist is to collect accurate information, and to expedite transit of the goods the want of which is indicated by that information.

Thus the accounts of trade can in fact be revised and audited beforehand. Moral feeling on the subject in America may intro- duce a disturbing element; but he must have been a stupid Spar- tan who learned to get drunk from the spectacle of the Helot, and the truly keen-sighted and auLive-minded English merchants will learn from the miscalculations of the American what stupidity it is to commit mistakes of account which can be precisely checked beforehand. Let us hear no more, then, of " speculating" activity, as an excuse for blunders to the extent of hundreds of thousands or millions. Such " difficulties " as those which have happened at Liverpool ought not to be permitted at all; and as the commercial mind awakens to a distinct perception of this truth, we may expect that such disturbances of commerce will die out..