The improved aspect of trade and the money-market has been
sufficient to attract attention ; and it is evident that a certain local interest in each branch of commerce has superseded general politics for this dull season. The Stock Exchange has been pleasantly ac- counting to itself for the fact that Consols rose to 921 before "the settlement," and that even Turkish stocks participate in the gene- ral improvement, war and a new loan notwithstanding. Manches- ter acknowledges that stocks move off; and if Manchester is rather vexed just now by the high price of the raw material of her staple, there are men in Liverpool, we have no doubt, who view that rise without alarm, and could easily explain it. In the hosiery and iron trades there is the same evidence of a more cheerful tone. There are substantial reasons for the improvement, sufficient not only to account for it, but to give some faith in its reality. The great export-markets are evidently in a healthier state : speculation has not yet reared its head again after the panics in Melbourne and New York, but from many signs it is clear that the attention of Americans and Australians is now turned more to the work of production. Thus, while stocks are lightened, the means of ex- change are augmented. The reports of the crops abroad are generally good—quite sufficient to do more than prevent a rise in Mark Lane, notwithstanding the chilling weather. So difficult, indeed, has it been to account for the absence of a rise on cold and cloudy Monday, that the philosophers of the Corn Parliament ascribed the equanimity of the market to the glass which now covers the building, and wards off the operation of the weather upon the immediate sensations of chapmen. " Formerly, Sir," cried one of the elders, "a good shower was worth half-a-crown or three shillings to us ; but now it may rain eats and dogs without our being a shilling the better for it." The remark is to a certain extent truer than the speaker thought : with better appliances, even corn-dealers are learning to generalize, and sellers do not at every cloud which comes over the face of the sun expect that rise in price, nor are buyers so ready to pay those "few shillings" more on the bushel, which in the aggregate make for the public an increased charge of millions sterling.
