any and every exhibition of love and loyalty that springs from motives of patriotism, so long as they do not lose sight of the one great paramount consideration, that peace and tranquillity are absolutely necessary to their prosperity. There never was a people in many respects more favored; and if they would only in good and loyal earnest beat their cannon into ploughshares and swords into pruninghooks, what a grand spectacle the swift mutations of time would soon reveal to the admiring gaze of the world! These reflections have been suggested by the pe

rusal of the subjoined letter, lately published in a leading British financial journal, and from the pen of an economist of note. Coming from such a source, the expression of confidence is exceedingly gratifying; it is an evidence that Colombia is now regarded with exceptional favor in London, and that such effort as she has made to maintain her credit will indeed serve her well. It may be accepted as a sign of most encouraging future promise:

There have been too few opportunities and too little inclination to act on the spirit of the recommendation of the concluding paragraph of Mr. Go

schen's late letter on Egyptian affairs, but I think the present chance should not be let slip of calling attention of all foreign stockholders to the prompt action taken under difficulties by the United States of Colombia to restore their credit, suspended, although not lost, by the civil war that has lately raged in that part of South America. On the 14th April last the agent of the Committee of the Colombian Bondholders announced the termination of the civil war that had been waged between the clerical party and the Liberals in those states, and it became his duty to urge the Government to take steps for the resumption of monthly payments for the interest of the foreign debt. He found the Government not only prepared to listen to his request, but anxious to comply with it, and that with an almost empty Exchequer; but by the 6th of June he is able to telegraph the resumption of monthly payments in July, with arrears to be paid in four quarterly payments, commencing in October next, and this morning comes an announcement of his receipt of £7,500. When efforts like these are made so promptly, and under circumstances of great difficulty, I think they ought to be brought prominently forward, not only to the honor of the state making those efforts, but as an encouragement to other states, not those of South America alone, to go and do likewise. I doubt not that New Granada, as it used to be called, will find in the future that this effort, greater than we realize in this favored land, will serve her well."

clared.

The President of the United States of Colombia, considering:

1. That there does not exist in the Republic any armed enemy of its institutions;

2. That the authority of the Federal Government and that of the several States is obeyed without resistance; it is decreed:

ARTICLE 1. Public order is declared reestablished in all the territory of the Union.

ART. 2. By a separate decree, the Army will be reduced to a peace footing.

ART. 3. The Presidents, Governors, and chief officers of the States, and the Prefects of the Territories, will dictate the necessary orders by which the present decree shall be immediately published by proclamation in all parts of the country. Signed by

SERJIO CAMARGO, Acting President. EUSTORJIO SALGAR, Sec. of the Interior. LUIS BERNAL, Sec. of Hacienda. J. M. QUIJANO W., Sec. of the Treasury. SANTOS ACOSTA, Sec. of War and Marine. General Trujillo, after having long and obstinately striven for preeminence as candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, relinquished his pretensions in that direction, and contented himself with the candidacy for President of the State of Antioquia, which event was regarded as a guarantee of continued peace.

COLORADO. At the election in Colorado on the 2d of October, only a Judge of the Supreme Court, and county and other local officers, were chosen. By agreement of the executive committees of the two parties the candidate for judge was selected by the Bar

of the State, and no opposition candidate was put in nomination. Wilbur F. Stone was the person selected, and he received 22,047 votes, out of a total of 22,342, the rest being scattered among several candidates. The constitution had provided for submitting to a vote of the people the question of requiring the Legislature to pass an act extending the right of suffrage to women. A vigorous canvass was made on this question, in which prominent advocates of female suffrage from all parts of the country participated. The total vote on the proposition was 20,665, of which 6,612 were in the affirmative and 14,055 in the negative, so that it was defeated by a majority of 7,441.

The valuation of property in the State, as determined by the Board of Equalization, was $45,756,170.36.

A case was decided by the Supreme Court in December, involving the question of the power of the State Board of Equalization to increase the total valuation of property as reported from the various counties. The conclusions of the Court are stated in the following passages of the decision:

Looking, then, to the provisions of the constitution and the statute, we are clearly of the opinion that the power to fix and determine the valuation of taxable property is lodged by them in the Assessor and the Board of County Commissioners of the several counties of the State, and that, when they have under the law performed this duty and exercised this power, the sum of the valuations of the several counties so by them found must be taken as the aggregate valuation of all the property in the State, and is conclusive and final as against the State Board of Equalization. The State Board may, for the purpose of adjusting and equalizing, increase the aggregate valuation of one county and decrease the aggregate valuation of another, but they have no power to increase the sum of all the valuations of the several counties of the State. That aggregate valuation has been found for them, and fixed by the authority and in the mode prescribed by the law. This view is not only sanctioned by the force of the general provisions of the statute, considered as a whole, but also by the phraseology of the sections under consideration. The board is to adjust and equalize the valuation. This term "valuation" here imports values already estimated and fixed, and must be referred, for the measure of its force and meaning, to the mode prescribed by law for estimating and fixing valuations. The aggregate material with which the board can deal is thus limited; they may adjust and equalize it among the several counties, but they cannot add to its value.

The extension of the Colorado Central Railroad, from Longmont to Cheyenne, connecting Denver with the Union Pacific at the latter point, was completed on the 1st of November.

The State University of Colorado was opened at Boulder on the 5th of September, and Dr. Joseph A. Sewall was installed as its first president. This institution was originally provided for in an act of the Territorial Legislature in 1861; but no appropriation was made, and no action taken to carry out the purpose of the law. On the revision of the laws in 1868, it was in substance reënacted. In 1870 the

subject was brought up in the Legislature again, and an attempt made to remove the location. The people of Boulder, however, by subscribing a large amount toward the erection of a proper building, secured its retention there. In 1874 the Legislature appropriated $15,000 for the construction of the building, on condition that an equal amount be raised by the people of Boulder. This was immediately pledged, and the trustees began operations, securing plans and making a contract for the work in 1875. The corner-stone was laid on the 20th of September of that year; and in the fall of 1876 the building was accepted by the trustees. It is of brick, 112 feet by 81, and four stories high. Its whole cost was about $110,000. It is under the charge of a board of regents, of which L. W. Dolloff is president, and Junius Berkley secretary. President Sewall, when chosen, was Professor of Natural Sciences in the State Normal School of Illinois. He is a native of Scarborough, Me., and received a medical education in Boston, Mass. He afterward pursued a course of study in the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University. The Professor of Latin and Greek in the new University is Justin E. Dow, a native of Newbury, Mass., and a graduate of Dartmouth College.

The present State government consists of John L. Routt, Governor; Lafayette Head, Lieutenant-Governor; Wm. M. Clark, Secretary of State; D. C. Crawford, Auditor; George C. Corning, Treasurer; J. C. Shattuck, Superintendent of Public Instruction; and A. J. Sampson, Attorney-General. The first Legislature closed its session in March. Its principal work was the preparation and adoption of a code of laws, which was printed in English, German, and Spanish. Three new counties were formed-Routt, Gunnison, and Custermaking the whole number 30. The total valuation of property is $40,882,412.36, of which $23,552,397.01 is real estate, and $17,330,015.35 personal. Taxes are paid on 1,552,774 acres of cultivated land. The State has no bonded debt, and the floating indebtedness, in the form of warrants selling at about 95 cents on the dollar, will probably be liquidated from the tax levy of the year. The product of gold and silver bullion for the year was about $7,500,000; the value of agricultural products was about $3,192,500; cattle and horses, $7,410,000; wool, $750,000. There are valuable deposits of coal in Colorado, and considerable progress has been made in mining it. The product of the year is put at $611,563. There are three varieties of coal found in the State: the ordinary lignite of the northern part of the State, the semi-bituminous or gas coals of Cañon City and Trinidad, and the socalled semi-anthracites of the Gunnison and Lower Bear River. There are seven lines of railroad in the State, six of which have a terminus at Denver. The following statement shows the number of miles operated in the State:

During the year 132 miles of road have been built by the Colorado Central and the Denver and Rio Grande companies.

A complete system of public education has been established under the law passed by the first Legislature. A State Superintendent is elected by the people every two years; and there is a county superintendent chosen in each county. Besides the State University at Boulder, which has a permanent endowment of 75,000 acres of land granted by the national Government, and is supported by a tax of onefiftieth of a mill on the dollar of all the taxable property in the State, there is a School of Mines at Golden, and an Institute for the Deaf and Dumb at Colorado Springs; while an Agricultural College has been provided for, and will be speedily established at Fort Collins.

For

COMMERCE, INTERNATIONAL. four or five years the entire commercial world has been laboring under one of those periodical crises which seem to be the unavoidable drawback of modern times. These crises are, indeed, caused by the very activity and elasticity of commercial enterprise in the modern world, and their extent and gravity are augmented by the very closeness and complexity of the mercantile ties and influences which connect communities and nations with each other, and which are, under normal circumstances, the source of their economic prosperity. The late period of depression has probably extended more widely, and will have a longer duration, than any similar one. The causes of the mercantile paralysis and social misery were different in different countries and in different industrial branches; but all of them—the exhaustion of war, the fever of speculation, the undue stimulation of certain industries and the squandering of labor in useless works, the inflation of nominal values and uncertainty of prices in countries having a paper currency, besides the natural causes of the failure of crops, inundations, conflagrations, and other disasters, and the political causes of changing governments, uncertain policies, and rumored wars-culminated when the period of contraction set in, and the financial shock was communicated from industrial centre to industrial centre, and from land to land. Great Britain, possessing the firmest foothold in the markets of the world through her useful mechanical productions, has not suffered as much as other countries; yet the growth of commer

cial enterprise in central Europe and America before the period of contraction, and the very struggle to maintain the new industries during that period, have, no doubt, seriously and permanently reduced the dominion of British commercial supremacy. The returns of French commerce show a great shrinkage in the foreign trade; but the greater decline in the importations than in the exportations is a new proof of the proverbial prudence and frugality of the French; and the volume of their commerce is still enormous, and sufficient to maintain the most expensive public administration-save that of Great Britain, if we include the expenses of local government in the latter with a costlier military establishment than that of any other non-belligerent power, and to preserve the national credit under the heaviest public debt in the world. The collapse of speculative enterprise in Austria, and afterward in Germany, after they had received a stimulus from the influx of the French warforfeit of five milliards, subjected those countries to a severe revulsion; but the commercial enterprise and ambition thus awakened in Germany may bear lasting fruit in the growth of industrial branches formerly pursued only in France and England, and in the increase of the foreign depots for German wares. It is Germany and England especially which have been impelled, by the contraction of trade, to seek new markets for their goods; and the opening up of new currents of commerce may be counted among the indirect benefits of the hard times. There are various reasons why America has not taken a proportionate share in the rivalry for the world's market. The advantage of shipping owned and controlled in the country, and sailing regular courses to foreign ports, favors England in the race, and Germany, who

COUNTRIES.

United States..

Great Britain.

France..

Austria..

Italy.

Belgium..

possesses the next largest carrying-trade on the high seas. The imposts on raw and partly manufactured materials prohibit competition in many articles. The higher rates of wages prevailing in the United States are not in every case synonymous with dearer production; but the traditions of American trade which lead the merchants to expect larger returns or more immediate returns on their capital than the undertakers of other countries, and their want of mercantile connections and an acquaintance with the conditions and requirements of foreign markets, are serious hinderances, while, moreover, the tide of exchanges does not set in favorably until the new commercial channels have been opened. The mind of the European business world has been considerably taken up this last year with several changes in commercial treaties. Most of the new provisions are in the direction of free trade, although every concession has been opposed by representatives of powerful interests and violent prejudices. Another question which has forced itself in an unpleasant way on the attention of the commercial community is the silver question; Germany's forcible adoption of the single gold standard, effected at the cost of many millions, having seriously disturbed the foreign trade of India, China, Chili, and other silver-paying countries, and placed embarrassing obstacles in the way of specie resumption by the French Government, and the Government of the United States (see article CURRENCY). Before the season of comparative stagnation now existing there was an active development of industrial facilities and commercial connections in all countries, as may be seen in the subjoined table presenting the exports of different countries, both agricultural and industrial, per head of the population, for the years 1868-74:

Russia.. Sweden.

The allowances to be made, in considering the above statement, for the imperfections of statistical returns and for the general diminution of the purchasing-power of money, it is impossible to determine. It is sure, however, that the improvements in the agents of production and in the means of communication have been such that many commodities are much cheaper; and the quantities in which they are produced, and the ability to purchase of the people of many countries, are vastly greater than they were a few years ago.

The report of the British Commissioners of Customs for 1876 showed an excess of merchan dise imports over exports of £125,968,263, or 44 per cent. of the total imports. This is the

largest excess of imports in any year, although for 22 years-ever since the revenue returns were first compiled-the imports have invariably exceeded the exports, and by annual amounts of 50 millions sterling and more. The commissioners explain this constant excess of imports as the result of English investments made abroad, the profits of which, with the earnings of British vessels, are returned to England in the shape of imports. A cause of the large increase in this balance may be accounted for by the fact of British capital having been called home within the past couple of years from abroad, the investments proving no longer sufficiently profitable. Another factor in this calculation, less satisfactory to English pride,

is undoubtedly the sharper competition with British manufactures. The fall in the prices of many staples within 10 years is noteworthy, cotton sinking in price from £4 128. 2d. per cwt. to £3 08. 5d., the quantities imported having greatly increased. America resumed its position as chief source of supply in 1876, India furnishing 965,000 cwt. less than in 1875. The imports of wool have largely increased, the whole increase being supplied by Australia. The manufactures in which importations have increased are principally cotton fabrics, woolens, and iron and steel products. The total importations amounted to £374,004,000, against £373,941,000 in 1875, showing an increase of £63,000. Of articles of consumption, there was a large increase in the importation of necessaries: live animals and bacon, £800,000 increase; butter, £1,200,000 increase; Indian corn, increase £4,600,000; hams, eggs, potatoes, pork, spirits, wine, and tobacco, £3,700,000 increase. Wheat, on the other hand, showed a decrease of £4,300,000, and the imports of barley and oats also were less. Articles of consumption of secondary importance showed the influence of the hard times, the falling off being about £5,000,000 in cheese, coffee, rice, sugar, tea, spices, etc. In materials for the staple manufactures, there was an improvement toward the end of the year in the importations of cotton, wool, jute, hides, flax, and silk. The cotton was nearly the same in quantity, but £6,000,000 less in value than in 1875. There was a decreased importation of hemp, flax, lead, nitre, pyrites, tin, and quicksilver, and an increase in wool, timber, jute, silk, and many minor articles. In timber the increase was £4,000,000. The increase of £2,300,000 in the value of raw silk imported was largely owing to a rise in price. In silk manufactures there was a decline; but in woolen and cotton textiles the increasing importations are ominous. The fact that American cotton goods, preferable in texture and price to the domestic fabrics, are on sale in the shops and on the markets of London and Manchester, has been frequently commented upon with misgivings by the English press within the past year or two. The increased balance against England in the trade of 1876 is owing almost entirely to an enormous shrinkage in the export trade. This was for the greater part attributable to the contraction of trade all over the world, and to the overstocking of foreign markets with British goods in previous years; but the more active competition of foreign manufactures, before which British industry is abating its supremacy year by year, is an important and significant item in the account. For several years past the English mind has been filled with gloomy forebodings for the future of their country's trade. It is not that they have yet suffered any serious decline, for the staple character of their products and their immense reserves of capital have enabled them to sustain the recent contraction of consumption bet

ter than the younger competing industries of other countries. But the fact that the Continental nations, where wages are lower and mechanical production has lately been extensively introduced, and the United States, where mechanical methods are generally shorter, and where, as an offset for higher wages, the workmen are more laborious, are now paying especial attention to the industries which have been the main-stay of English prosperity and have been monopolized by her industrialists, gives England cause to fear that she is passing the turning-point in her fortunes. As regards America, British producers have long ceased to assert themselves in that market in many branches of industry; while they are becoming more and more dependent on America for many necessities. In 1865, according to the British customs returns, English exports to the United States amounted to 122 million dollars and the imports from there to 84 millions. In 1876, England exported not more than 98 millions to the United States, and imported from there 367 millions. Not only are Europe and America fast becoming independent of England in the textile industries, although her cotton goods are still a necessity in all countries, and her spinners furnish the yarn for many of the Continental fabrics, but in the iron industries, in which the British kingdom has always been facile princeps, great improvements have been made not only in America but on the continent of Europe, and now even the English themselves prefer French locomotives, common bars and girder-iron from Belgium, German scissors, and American edgetools. Many examples might be given of foreign manufactures which have supplanted the English ware in their own island, or threaten to supplant them, such as leather, hardware, watches, locks, machinery from America, German paper, Belgian and French jewelry, etc. In some cases this is owing to actual deterioration in the British products, as, for instance, the unimportant but significant article, the common house-clock, which, on the authority of Sir E. Beckett in the "Encyclopædia Britannica," has so deteriorated, in spite of the improvements in machinery, that it is fast being driven out of the market by the American plain and French and German ornamental clocks. The steady decline of English exports since 1873, with the concurrent and remarkable increase in the imports and in the balance against the country, is shown in the tabulated survey of the total commerce for the last seven years, given below: