Security for the administrators first; then,
an equitable satisfaction offered to the suffering
interests. In governmental regions there exists
a strong repugnance to exert heavy pressure on
the administrators—of which repugnance the
said administrators are well aware. Perhaps
even they mistake it for friendly patronage.
But, to forestall the issue of the threatened
lawsuits and the influence of public opinion, M.
Mirès strongly advises them—and notably the
MM. Periere, Galliera, and Sellière—to accept
the proposition of a Tribunal of Arbitration
composed of "sommités sociales," people high
in society, as the surest way of saving their
honour, instead of risking continued judicial
proceedings, in which their reputations may
receive unseemly gashes. "At any price, avoid
future lawsuits," is the serious advice of M.
Mirès. If they refuse it the public will believe,
not that their hands are perfectly clean, but
that, in risking such a stake, the administrators
are influenced by some secret assurance of
gaining their suit.

But those gentlemen must have forgotten that
the day is past when judges delivered their
sentences "according to the facts of the case"
without further explanation. At that time, the
motives of judgments remained unknown. At
present, the magistrates, being obliged to give
reasons for their decisions, are under the
control of public opinion. Managers,
possessed of royal fortunes, can hardly expect a
favourable decision when sued by their ruined
constituents; especially as those fortunes were
acquired during the period in which the ruin of
the shareholders was accomplished. This idea
is strongly supported by the adverse judgment
against the administrators already delivered by
their peers—the judges of the Tribunal of
Commerce.

M. Mirès boldly shows up the fortune
accumulated by the Brothers Pereire, Emile and
Isaac, during their management of the Crédit
Mobilier. In 1848, they were in very
embarrassed circumstances, which continued with
such intensity that, in 1852, for want of five
hundred thousand francs (twenty thousand
pounds), the amount of caution money required,
they could not be comprised on the list of
concessionaires of the railway from Paris to Lyons.
In 1854, they were still what is called poor.
They inhabited apartments in the Rue
d'Amsterdam, the property of the Sainte-Germain
railway; their whole fortune then consisting of
the founders' shares in the said railway.

At present they possess, lands stretching
from the Parc de Monceaux and the Boulevard
Malesherbes up to Batignolles, worth thirty-
five millions; buildings erected on the same for
the private account of the Messieurs Pereire, ten
millions; the forest of Armauvillers and the
château they have built there, ten millions;
their hôtel in the Rue du Faubourg St.
Honoré, six millions; their other hôtel in the Rue
de Valois, one million; the château de Palmer
(famous claret vineyard), in the Gironde, two
millions; Arcachon (fashionable and much
frequented watering-place near Bordeaux), six
millions; estates along the railway from Bordeaux
to Bayonne, reached by agricultural roads made
at the expense of the State, ten millions. Total
of "propriétés immobilières" property in land
and houses, eighty millions of francs, or three
millions two hundred thousand pounds sterling.

Moreover, numerous commercial companies
are cited as having been established with their
capital, such as the "Magasins du Louvre," the
"Grande Maison de Blanc," the; manufactory
of "Conserves Alimentaires," &c. All those
are what are called "Valeurs mobilières,"
property belonging to the cash-box. To give an
idea of the immense amount of this "mobilier"
wealth, some years ago, M. Emile Pereire, at a
meeting of the shareholders of "I'Immobilière,"
said that he and his brother held between them
more shares than all the other shareholders
put together. Consequently, it is a very
moderate estimate to put down their mobilier
property at the modest sum of thirty millions,
making a grand total of one hundred and ten
millions of francs, or four million four hundred
thousand pounds sterling.

This wealth (in no way patrimonial) has not
come to them either by inheritance or through
their wives. When the Messieurs Pereire came
to Paris, they were not a bit better off than
M. Mirès was. In short, they sprang from
nothing. All they possess must have been
acquired during their direction of the Crédit
Mobilier. When a man produces nothing, but
merely buys and sells, it is clear that, to fill his
pockets, other people's must be emptied.

The disasters caused by the collapse of the
Crédit Mobilier are said to have been nearly as
terrible as the ruin brought about by the Assignats
of '93. Innumerable are the individuals
who have had to learn the difference between
affluence and indigence. Behind these trials,
pending or expected, more than thirty thousand
families are anxiously awaiting the issue. Small
to them is the consolation that, if the Crédit
Mobilier (although professedly established for
the development of national industry) have done
no good to itself, it has at least done good—as
far as filling their pockets is concerned—to the
Brothers Pereire, Emile and Isaac.

    VIGILANCE IN THE FAR WEST

Far West in the United States, among the
canons and gulches of the Rocky Mountains,
and in that part of their line which supplies the
headwaters of the Missouri, the gold-diggers
have formed a community too young for
recognition upon any map published in England.
Notwithstanding the neglect of our geographers,
a book printed in one of their own towns
describes this region as "the world-renowned
country, now the territory of Montana." It
has a city of Bannack—named from the Bannack
Indians—and a city of Virginia, which was to
have been called Varina, after Mrs. Jefferson
Davis; but the first judge who was asked to
head a document with that address said he
would see them all——Well, never mind—and