Genre:

News-Commentary

Subjects:

Commerce, Crime, Railways, Transport

    Alarmed at news that Samuel M Peto, Thomas R Crampton, and Edward L Betts are in the London Court of Bankruptcy and that the Bank of England has reduced its interest rates by 2%, interprets the latter as the effect of 'stagnation of enterprise, cessation of labour, and paralysis of industry', and the fate of Peto, Crampton, and Betts as 'reckless financing, contractors' lines, gulled shareholders, £100 shares at £17, general distrust of railway enterprises, and general disgust with railway investments'. Offers a savage criticism of the 'practical' nature of the English people by attacking their financial greed, their shady speculations, their blowing of 'the bubbles of trade and industry till they burst', their celebration of false puffery, the impotence of 'public Parliamentary labours' and 'inertia' of self-government, and the 'rascality' of its retail trade. Insists that 'We are about the most unpractical, wasteful, thriftless, and helpless people on the face of the globe', not least because of our worship of Mammon.