In the issues of debentures, amounting altogether to 618,692,500f., there had been a rebate of 201,218,295f.; so that the company only realized 417,474,205f., or £16,698,968, which, added to the £5,900,000 of the called-up share capital, makes up £22,598,968, which represents the available net cash resources placed at the disposal of M. de Lesseps up to September 1884 inclusive.

In order to express a judgment as to the prospective condition of the company when the canal will be thrown open supposing that the Chagres will offer no insurmountable difficulty, and that money will be forthcoming whenever M. de Lesseps asks for it--in short, that everything will run smoothly for him: we must first find what is the amount of work left undone in September 1884, and add its cost, together with the cost of finding the money and interest, administration, &c., to the above £30,647,700, less whatever he had in hand in that month.

In the beginning of it M. de Lesseps had raised altogether 572,500,000f., or £22,900,000, of which he had still in cash £3,418,000, and therefore the total amount issued and spent, or disposed of, was £19,482,000. During the month M. de Lesseps issued his loan for £7,747,700, which added to that balance on hand, makes the total gross amount at his disposal at the end of September 1884, £11,165,700.

Now, in September of last year there were still to be disposed of no less than 116,905,420 cubic metres of excavations. The excavations hitherto done are among the easiest; and yet, in face of repeated promises of M. de Lesseps to have 2,000,000 cubic metres a month, the average for the first (and best) five months of this year (1885) has been 668,000 metres per month, or 8,000,000 a year. In the opinion of experts who have visited the isthmus, the company is now removing as much earth and rock as it will ever remove. M. de Lesseps has had all the money required, and he boasts that he finds easily any thousands of labourers he may require; in fact, he bewilders us with the large multitude of workmen he now employs. However, we will assume that the total excavation henceforth will be increased by 50 per cent. beyond its amount in the past.

Let it not be supposed that anything like that increase is to be expected. A year ago some wonderful increase had been promised-from 210,000 metres a month to 2,000,000 (see pages 122 and 128). We have just seen that the average in the first five months of 1885 has been only 668,000 a month, and from the table in page 126 our readers may see that the average for the five months April to August of last year (1884) was 654,472 metres; so that there has been hardly any increase in the work since last year.

However, we will assume that M. de Lesseps will be able for the future to take away the annual average of 12,000,000 metres, beginning from September 1884. As at that time there were 116,905,420 metres to be disposed of, it follows that there will be work for nine years and nine months, commencing from September last. We will now calculate what will be the position of the

company at the end of that period of construction. Let us see how much the canal will have cost.

Raised and disposed of up to September

Resources in Sept. 30, 1884 £11,165,700

EXPENSES TO FINISH THE CANAL:

(a) Excavations,116,905,400

c.m. at even such low price

£19,482,000

37,221,355

3,120,000

16,171,806

£72,875,161

(e) Discounts, premium, and expenses of issuing new capital: say 40 per cent. on £53,400,000, less the £5,900,000, the uncalled. amount on shares, on which there will be no discount, or 40 per cent. on £47,500,000

(f) Interest and amortization on sums to be raised (£72,400,000), say 5 per cent. for four full years on the whole sum

£72,875,161

19,000,000

15,928,000

Let us see now what will be the financial outlook of the company. And here we have first to consider the expected traffic of the canal.

The Paris Congress took as the basis 6,000,000 tons, but it seems to us that there is exaggeration in that estimate. Here is an instance of it.

At the Congress of 1879, Admiral Ammen, U.S.N., presented a paper (prepared by the Bureau of Statistics of Washington) showing that the movement between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States, and

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the commerce of the latter country with all nations or colonies in the Pacific comprised 971,455 tons only, whereas Mr. Szarvady at the same time was demonstrating" that there were 3,443,000 tons, which number M. Levasseur consented to lower to 2,000,000 by a process of figuring which is only too analogous to that of all the figuring of this Panama Canal business.

In order to show how curiously these figures were handled it is enough to mention the fact that M. Levasseur, the reporter of the committee on statistics, gravely said (Compte Rendu, page 78) that "M. Mendes Leal (the Portuguese Minister in Paris), an exposant la situation commercial du Brésil a temoigné de l'interêt que le grand Empire de l'Amérique du Sud avait aussi au percement de l'isthme." Now, Senhor Mendes Leal, whose exposé is published alongside, does not say any such nonsense; for Brazil, indeed, has no interest whatever in the canal; on the contrary, her interest is the other way. Vessels going to the west coast of South America and to the Cape of Good Hope now pass by Brazil; henceforth they will not. Brazil has no direct trade with Australia, and has hardly any with California. In the second place the number of tons is not so important to our purpose as the reasonableness or unreasonableness of the dues. At the Congress of 1879 M. Gauthist, Secretary of the Society of Commercial Geography, brought to its notice that while a ship of 4,500 tons would pay only 45,00of. to pass the Suez Canal, she would be required to pay 120,000f. according to the tariff proposed by M. Wyse and Colombia,-nearly three times as much.

Now, can the Panama Company maintain that high tariff and attract the 3,000,000 or 6,000,000 tons, as the case may be? Every one is aware of the extreme com