Financial credit was once supposed to be the attribute of
monarchies, but it is rapidly accreting to Republics. The Government of the United States now raises money at ai per cent., and the now three per cent. French Loan of £40,000,000 has all been taken at 83.50, and is selling at 85. The request for this loan has once more revealed the amazing wealth and credit of France. The Government. asked for £40;000,000, and directed the applicants to deposit fifteen per -cent. in cash ; but in two days the deposits rose in Paris to forty millions, and in the Departments to eighty millions sterling. This is exclusive of the enormous sum subscribed in London by foreign millionaires, estimated a little vaguely at eighty millions more. In other words, the Republican Govern. ment of France, without going outside its own territory, obtained in two days £120,000,000 at less than four per cent., and of- this sum two-thirds was subscribed by the people of the rural districts. That is the kind of poverty and wretchedness which peasant-proprietorship, no doubt under favourable conditions of soil and climate, inflicts on France. What fools folks are,. when it is their interest to be stupid.
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