This judgment of the Tribunal of Commerce
will be appealed against, and the appeal is
likely to come off towards the close of June.
Supposing it to be rejected, as justice and
common sense would indicate, every other holder
of the last issued shares will make the same
claims on the administrators. It was expected
that the administrators would appeal; and yet
one asks on what grounds the judgment, which
has reached them, can possibly be reversed.
They have only one hope left to cling to.

They maintained before the Tribunal of
Commerce, that the Council of State, by
approving their deliberations, sanctioned their
meetings, and that the Emperor's decree covers
all. This pretension will doubtless be reproduced
before the court—with small chance of
success, because the tribunal has already replied
to it in the following terms:

"There is no ground for inquiring whether
the attention of the Council of State was directed
to the veritable situation of the society and
the regularity of its deliberations, since any
examination it might make could not prejudice
the rights of third parties. Consequently, it
remains not the less certain that the
appreciation of the said deliberations, whether
concerning their form or their principle, continues
completely within the domain of the Tribunal
of Commerce."

Independent of this "considerant," we may
recal to mind under the influence of what pressure
the Council of State granted its authorisation.

The acting directors of the Crédit Mobilier,
after obtaining from the Crédit Foncier an
assistance of thirty millions and the support of
the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, declared
that, by doubling the capital of the Crédit
Mobilier, all embarrassment would be removed,
and the societies definitely saved from ruin. If,
in order to protect the interests mixed up with
the Crédit Mobilier, the authorisation to double
its capital were necessary, state reasons justified
the concession. But if, on the contrary, the
support solicited was only a lure—if the end in
view was a compromising of the state, with the
intention  of converting it into a weapon—the
success of such a step, far from being an
excuse, deserves the severest censure. Such an
intention would be not merely ingratitude, but
a flagrant blunder; because it would place the
government in the necessity of making known
the declarations under the influence of which
the doubling of the capital was accorded.

It is evident that the judgment pronounced
by the Tribunal of Commerce, in the matter of
the Crédit Mobilier, is of great importance,
because it establishes the responsibility of the
administrators. Directors are taught that they
cannot do exactly as they please, and cannot then
defy the shareholders to touch them. It is also a
most praiseworthy instance of a decision arrived
at without needless delay. The Tribunal
contrived to hear the pleadings, and to make up its
mind, in two sittings only. Nevertheless, the
interests involved were enormous; the principle
contended for, full of weighty consequences.

It will be believed that not the feeblest hits
at the administrators of the Crédit Mobilier, i.e.,
at the Brothers Pereire, are those given by M.
Mirès. He professes to wish to ease their fall.
He urges them to avoid further exposure, and
to compromise the matter; that is, to refund.
He is astonished that men reputed intelligent
should do nothing to stop the rising wave which
threatens soon to overwhelm them. What can
their further fall signify to him? What he
wished for, he has obtained; they have been
judged, and found wanting. The (im)morality
of their transactions has been made as evident
as the loyalty of his own.

They reckon on the public services they have
rendered, and thereupon build their hopes of
immunity. According to their accounts, their
conduct has always been absolutely
disinterested; the public welfare was their only
thought. With incredible simplicity, they
exclaim, "After what we have done for the
national weal, is it possible that we should be
thrown overboard!" Forgetting their business-
monopoly for fifteen years, exercised with
no merciful hand; forgetting their abuses
and infractions of the law (in the case of
numerous "syndicats" combinations to bring
about a rise or fall in the price of shares), they
have the face to say, "It is the affair of the
ports of Marseilles which has let us down!"

Nothing of the kind is true. If they hope
to meet with justice tempered with mercy, let
them acknowledge their errors or their faults.
To repair the evils they have caused, let them
sacrifice their ill-gotten wealth. At that price,
they may still retain some little remnant of
respectability. But, if they insist on their
shareholders' ruin, if they be determined to
keep their money at the expense of their
honesty, they will have to undergo the fate of
other less culpable financiers, who have had to
suffer for their doings.

M. Mirès, therefore (in "La Presse," which
is his property) is making charitable and
persevering efforts to prevent the explosion
of the innumerable lawsuits which, like the
showers of shooting stars at their stated epochs,
threaten to set the financial firmament in a
blaze. If discontented shareholders cannot be
persuaded to refrain, the administrators of the
Crédit Mobilier will be in the position of a
target for chassepot practice. Not that he feels
much pity for them individually. But his
great fear is, that if saucy shareholders be thus
allowed to get into a habit of persecuting
directors, there will be an end of all association
and enterprise for the carrying out of great
undertakings. He is afraid that the character,
the notoriety, and the consequences, of these
lawsuits, will cause respectable, able, and
wealthy men to keep aloof from grand industrial
schemes: which schemes must consequently
languish and fall to the ground. He would
like "a conclusion," a shutting up of the
business, without judicial debates. It would
be much better, he thinks, for things to be made
pleasant, than to go on raising more and
more fuss, more and more scandal. There has
already been too much of both.