A trial before the Royal Court of Paris has excited
the public interest of that capital to an extreme degree. Our readers have head of the attacks against M. Emile de Girardin for having set commas eittl enterprises on foot, and sold shares with the conviction that they were mere bubbles. AI. de Girardin was acquitted. The present prosecution was directed against Cleeman, unarm of business to M. de (;iraidin, accusing him and others of having established a comp), for the working of the mines of St. Berain, which mines were a mere bubble. The whole force of the French bar was employed on Whet side. MM. Teste and Charles Dupin for the defendants ; IU. Odds ion Barrot and the public prosecutor for the prosecution. The Court idemned Cleeman and Bluen to three years' imprisonment and e: ow francs fine for having formed a company and issued shares of the coal-mines of St. Berain, with a mendacious prospectus stating the - 1 to be of the best kind, and found in the greatest quantities, when the facts were directly the reverse.—Jforning Chronicle. The most extraordinary feature in the French joint stock banking enterprises undoubtedly is the rapid extension of bank paper circula- tion amongst a people whose prejudices against it from former and fatal experience during the times of Revolution and assignats, were held by very well-informed people to be entirely unconquerable. Yet the two banks of Laffitte and Bordeaux alone have in the space of one year succeeded, apparently without undue effort, and merely as the result of the public confidence they have inspired, in placing a cir- culation of their billets or " credit notes " to the amount of about 27,000,000 francs, or 1,080,0001., being nearly equal to one-eleventh of the total note circulation of all the private and joint stock banks of England and Wales at the present time.—Times.
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