We published last week a table of the hi-monthly quotations of Shares for the last two years, which exhibited a total depreciation during that period of over Tls. 5,000,000. We give to-day another table, showing the actual and market values of the stock, which will go to prove how far that depreciation is reasonable or extravagant. The present figures exhibit a depreciation in the market value, under the value as shown by the last published reports, of Tls. 1,697,126 and $1,467,000—or roughly, Tls. 2,797,376; that is to say, prima facie, stocks are unuecessarily depreciated by that amount, They have fallen Tls. 5,000,000 in value in two years, whereas a fall of Tis, 2,202,624 only was necessary to reduce them to their actual value.
Holders of local stocks may find some consolation in the fact, under the actual loss which their investment show, Whether the shares have changed hands, or whether they are still held by the same people, their present state represents a loss of Tls. 5,000,000 og compared with two years ago. The men who have sold' have incurred the loss, men who have held can only realise at the depressed value; so that the people who have been interested in Shares—and who has not?—are practically Tls. 5,000,000 poorer than they were on the Ist July, 1873. It may encourage present holders to find that the depreciation is in most cases as illogical as was the extravagant inflation of 1871. When a pendulum has swung too far one way, the recoil is equally excessive; and so it usually is in life; after public opinion has been wildly Radical—as shown by the majority with which Mr. Gladstone entered office—it sways back to Conservatism, as shown by the similar majority now
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.