1855....Alabama December 31, 1854.. .California DEBTS OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE STATES OF THE UNION. [FROM THE CIRCULAR OF MARIE & KANZ.] March ... 13,994,615 851,470 137,818,079 December 31, 1854..., North Carolina. October December 31, 1854....Pennsylvania... 1, 1853....Tennessee.. October 1, 1854.... The estimates of 1850, under the column of Taxable Property, are taken from the census, and include property not taxed, as well as that which is subject to taxation. OHIO. The State is at present redeeming $500,000 of the loan of 1856, at 103 per cent. PENNSYLVANIA. Revenue from ordinary sources in 1854, $5,218,099. Expenses for ordinary purposes, including interest, $1,116,744. The public works, which cost $35,060,667, yielding no income to the State, the latter has authorized them to be sold to the highest bidder, at a minimum of $7,000,000. TENNESSEE. We have no later statement than the above (1st October, 1853.) The State has further granted its credit to railroads to the extent of $10,000 per mile, making probably an aggregate of $6,000,000. VIRGINIA. The State has further guarantied $3,906,874, of City Canal and other securities. The State owns $25,853,732 of stock, which yield an income equivalent to 6 per cent on $10,280,449. REMARKS. ALABAMA. This debt is being rapidly reduced, under the operations of the Sinking Fund. GEORGIA. No report has been made later than November 30, 1853. The debt has not been increased since then. ILLINOIS. The debt, during the last two years, has been reduced $2,750,038. The Governor states that it will, no doubt, be entirely liquidated before ten years. The proceeds of a special tax is applied to the back interest; the proceeds of the sales of certain public lands, to the redemption of the principal. INDIANA. The debt comprises $6,040,000 of 5 per cents, and $1,763,139 of 24 per cents. KENTUCKY. The public works, costing $5,484,740, yielded an income in 1853 of $460,289. LOUISIANA. Amount of debt bought in by the Sinking Fund in 1854, $93,000. MARYLAND. From this sum, the $3,178,637 lying in the Sinking Fund is to be deducted. MASSACHUSETTS. The State owns $13,965,105 of productive property; $2,077,796 unproductive real estate; and $5,049,556 mortgages on railroads. MICHIGAN. The Governor recommends the application of the present surplus on hand of $553,003 to the redemption of certain bonds, redeemable at the pleasure of the State. MISSOURI. The State has further lent its credit to railroads for $5,800,000. NEW YORK. The canals, which have cost $40,000,000, yield a revenue equal to 6 per cent on $50,000,000. NORTH CAROLINA. The debt will be increased $1,000,000 by the loan to bid for on the 14th inst, and $2,000,000 more in the course of 1855-56. VALUE OF PROPERTY, REAL AND PERSONAL, IN CONNECTICUT. The assessed value of property in the State of Connecticut on the first day of October, 1853 and 1854, is exhibited in the annexed table. Railroad stock and some bauk and insurance stock, amounting to about thirty millions of dollars, are not included, as they pay taxes directly to the State: ASSESSED VALUE OF PROPERTY IN CONNECTICUT. TRANSACTIONS OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND. The annual accounts presented to Parliament pursuant to the Acts 26, 48, and 59, George III., have just been published. They show that the amount of all exchequer bills, treasury-bills, or other government securities which were purchased by the governor and company of the Bank of England, or on which any sums were lent or advanced by the said Bank of England, during the year ended the 5th of January, 1855, included the following sums-viz., in the quarter ending on the 5th of April, 1854, £3,711,201; in the quarter ended the 4th of July, £790,000; in the same quarter, £5,852,048; in the quarter ending on the 10th of October, £500,00; in the same quarter, £4,029,289; and in the quarter ending the 5th of January, 1855, £2,460,582. All these advances were made on the growing produce of the Consolidated Fund. There were also advanced on exchequer bills two sums of £1,750,000 and £300,450. All these amounts were paid off during the year, except, £235,900, which remained undischarged in the hands of the Bank on the 5th of January last. The balances issued for the payment of dividends due and not demanded, and the payment of lotery prizes or benefits not claimed, amounted as follows-viz., on the 5th of April, 1854, to £1,099,209, of which £990,953 was advanced to Government; on the 5th of July to £1,079,164, of which £979,164 was advanced to Government; on the 10th of October to £1,013,293, of which £913,293 was advanced to Government; and on the 5th of January, 1855; £1,066,081, of which £913,293 (the same sum as in the preceding quarter) was advanced to the government. The sums left in the Bank of England consequently amounted on the above-named quarter days to £108,256, £100,000, £100,000, and £152,788, respectively. An account of the receipt and expenditure of the sum of £2,794,722 during the year 1854 by the commissioners for the reduction of the national debt, shows that the greater portion of the receipts accrued from "cash received at sundry times from the Exchequer," and that nearly all of this cash, or £2,771,597, was expended in the purchase of exchequer-bills. The rest of the receipts were appropriated to the purchase of £2,974 Consuls, and £24,921 Reduced Annuities Consolidated. A supplementary return states that on the 16th of February, 1854, Mr. Gladstone, the Chancelor of the Exchequer, applied to the Bank for advances on Exchequer-bills, of such sums as should not leave a larger amount of the said bills in the hands of the Governor of the Bank than £1,000,000; and that on the 8th of June, 1854, a similar advance was requested to the amount of £750,000. Both requests were complied with by the Court of Directors of the Bank of England. THE DEBTS OF CITIES IN THE UNITED STATES. The following table shows at a glance the debts, population, and value of taxable property in several of the largest cities in the Union. It is believed to be nearly BELL'S PHILOSOPHY OF JOINT-STOCK BANKING. It will be seen by the following extract from a review in the London Economist, that G. M. BELL, Esq., (a name favorably known to the readers of the Merchants' Magazine,) has published a new edition of his treatise on the "Philosophy of JointStock Banking." In reviewing the work, the Economist justly remarks: "It states nearly all that a book can state on the subject; for, after ingenuity has exhausted itself in describing all the possible cases that the manager of a joint-stock bank has to consider, there are always new circumstances arising which the motherwit of the manager must decide for himself. For them the 'file affords no precedent.' Correctly and emphatically does Mr. Bell say, 'that the entire security of the whole system of banking rests on this one word-MANAGEMENT,' Banking, however, is not in this respect singular. All business depends on management, and even when it is precribed by an act of Parliament, there must still be management to adapt it to circumstances as well as the act. The direction of an act is really adding to all the difficulties of a business the difficulty of knowing what the act prescribes, and conducting the business accordingly. Mr. Bell is an enlightened advocate of perfect free trade in banking; and we presume all men are by this time convinced that no folly or presumption is greater than that of ignorant legislators pretending to regulate a business which those who carry it on have in a great measure yet to learn." GOLD AND SPECIE RECEived in engLAND IN 1854. According to Herapath's (London) Journal, the following are the net arrivals of gold and specie; that is, the excesses of the published arrivals over the departures for the past year 1854, up to the 30th December:-Total for the year, £21,400,133. This is exclusive of sums brought and sent away by private individuals, loans, &c. In the following table, which has cost no little labor, from its size, to compile, the imports of the precious metals are apportioned to the countries from which they were shipped. It should be observed that these are the imports, irrespective of exports to them or any other places. Imports are not included which are trifling in amount, or from places which send us but little gold. It the last column, under the head of South America, Pacific, &c., is included £253,000 from the East Indies, £380,000 from Mexico, and £40,000 from Russia : "This table shows that we have had nearly as much of the precious metals from the United States as from Australia, and about half as much from our West India colonies as from America. The balance of trade, therefore, has been greatly in our favor from all three places. But it is a remarkable fact that our unbalanced exports from America, if the payments were at all of short date, were much greater during the last, than the first six months of 1854, that is during the wilder part of the American mania. In December, however, the returns of gold fell off to less than half the average of the preceding five months, no doubt owing to the rupture of American credit, and the fear of our merchants to export. The Australian trade, measured by a similar rule, showed much more done in the first half of 1854 than in the last, which is easily accounted for by the markets being glutted by our wild exportations to that colony. "It is here worthy of remark that, according to the gold returns, the unbalanced exports-which are usually, though not always truly, considered a measure of our advantage by the trade-are only about one-sixth to South America, the Pacific, &c., of what they are to our Australian colonies." COMMERCE AND FINANCES OF RUSSIA. Some elaborate tables have just been published by the statistical department of the British Board of Trade, conveying all the latest information obtained regarding the commerce and finances of Russia. From these it appears that in 1852 the public debt of the empire, domestic and foreign, was £63,185,308. In the same year the revenue from customs and excise duties was £4,924,608. As regards the general revenue, the amount is not given for a later period than 1849, when, exclusive of Poland and Finland, it was £24,794,735, of which £7,275,458 was from direct taxes, £7,745,110 from indirect taxes, and £9,774,167 from the brandy monopoly. Under the head of shipping, the tables show that the total of vessels entered at Russian ports in 1852 was 8,615, of an aggregate burden of 1,570,645 tons, more than half of which were to the ports in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azoff. The total clearances were 8,407 vessels, of 1,520,160 tons. Of this trade fully a fourth was carried on in British ships, Turkish, Greek, Swedish, Sardinian, Dutch, Austrian, Prussian, and Danish, coming next in order. The most important of any single port is Odessa, where the arrivals in 1858 amounted to 589,178 tons, while the value of the cargoes shipped, and which consisted principally of grain, was £5,627,500, or about 150 per cent above their amount in 1851. NEW BANKING LAW OF INDIANA. All banks are prohibited from issuing more than one-twentieth of their bill circulation in denominations under five dollars. No bank can reissue the bills of the banks of other States. The majority of the stock of any bank must be owned by resident citizens of the State. The stocks allowed to be taken by the auditor as securities for the issued bills, are "such as form any portion of the public debt now created, or hereafter to be created, the United States or by that State, and chargeable on the treasury, or such other States of the Union as pay interest semi-annually, or at any less period, on their public debts; but such debts shall, in all cases, be, or be made to be, equal to a stock producing six per cent per annum; and it shall not be lawful for the treasurer to take any stock at any rate above its par value, nor its market value.” The thirty-day notice of the old law, after suspension of payments, before the bank can be wound up, is abolished, and the auditor is compelled to proceed to redeem the bills of a suspended bank immediately after he shall have given notice to the bank. which he is bound to give on evidence of any default in specie payments. Banks can only be organized in towns having one thousand inhabitants and can only carry on business at their respective locations. The owners of banks have to prove that they are possessed of unincumbered taxable property in the State, subject to execution. THE RATES OF INTEREST IN LOUISIANA. We give below the several sections of a bill passed at the late session of the Legislature of Louisiana, and approved by the Governor March 15th, 1855: SECTION 1. That all debts shall bear interest at the rate of five per cent, from the time they become due, unless otherwise stipulated, SEC. 2. That article two thousand eight hundred and ninety-five of the Civil Code shall be so amended that the amount of conventional interest shall in no case exceed eight per cent under pain of forfeiture of the entire interest so contracted. SEC. 3. That if any person hereafter shall pay on any contract a higher rate of interest than the above, as discount or otherwise, the same may be sued for and recov ered within twelve months from the time of such payment. SEC. 4. That all laws contrary to the provisions of this act, and all laws on the same subject matter, except what is contained in the Civil Code and Code of Practice, be repealed. COMMERCIAL STATISTICS. STATISTICS OF THE WHALE FISHERY. According to the annual statement of the New Bedford Shipping List, there was imported into the United States in 1854 of sperm oil, 76,096 barrels; whale oil, 319,837 barrels, and of whalebone, 3,445,200 pounds. The import of oil and bone for each year from 1841 to 1854 has been as follows. |