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COMMERCIAL FROM OUR COMMERCIAL CORRESPONDENT NEW YORK, Oct. 17, 1854. Almost all business has during the week been greatly offeeted by the awful catastrophe of the Arctic. No cireumstance hardly ever occurred which so generally elicited the sympathies of the commercial world as that sad event. At the Merchants' Exchange and at the Corn Exchange business was suspended for the day, and the week has been a broken one. The pecaniary loss connected with the Aretie is not so great here as was apprehended; it may reach $1,000,000, ship and cargo, of which one-half is held abroad. The item is, however, an important one when added to the losses previously sustained during the past year on shipping. This interest for the moment is exceedingly depressed, through the reaction of causes which for several years have combined to confer great prosperity upon that interest. The Mexican war caused a demand for vessels on the part of the government, and that demand has been sustained in various ways up to the present time. The famine of 1847 put into requisition all the mercantile navy of the world, and ships-of-war were even required to transport food. The California fever continued the demand for vessels, improved by the Australian excitement of last year, when also the recurring short crops of Europe again gave extensive employment to mercantile tonnage. In all these séven years the building of ships has not ceased largely to increase, until the tonaage now owned in the Union is 4,407,006, against 3,527,115 in 1850 an increase of nearly one million tons, or 30 per cent., in three years. With such means of transportation the demand has fallen off. The trade to California and Australia is next to nothing. The exports of produce to Europe, which were last year so active, are now nearly ceased, while the cotton is not yet active: and the European war, which it was hoped would cause a demand for the neutral bottoms of the United States, has ceased to have any influence. It is not, therefore, a matter of surprise that freights are very low and the value of shipping diminished. The new banks of the city, which have been started recently in such profusion, have also undergone reaction, and three of them have gone down during the week. The difficulty with the concerns was, that they were forced into existence by the payment of the capitals in stock notes, which have not been paid up, and the banks have struggled for existence by attempting to live on credit. Opposed to this were three difficulties: 1st, no notes could be issued without actual security being deposited with the comptroller; 2d. a weekly publication of the condition was required. These are legal regulations. The old banks established a new one of their own in the clearing house, where every bank is required to settle its balances in cash every day. This was fatal; no needy directors could get anything out of the bank for longer than a day, because whatever he got would certainly appear next morning at the clearing house against the institution. The clearing house was for a long time very indulgent, by which is meant that the strong banks were not disposed to press the weak ones. This course, however, soon became impossible, and is now no longer tolerated. The Knickere bocker, the Suffolk, and the Eighth Avenue, have been excluded, and have failed. Some of the officers of the "up town" banks displayed a good deal of feeling, and resorted to queer tricks to affect the old banks-as thus : the city funds a are kept in the Mechanics' Bank, and are usually checked out by the proper officer in favor of the city creditor. On Wednesday there were some two hundred hands to be paid small sums, and an unseen influence induced the drawing of the checks "to order," which required each to endorse his e check. This, to many, was an impossible performance, and it was suggested to them that it was only a trick of the bank e to avoid payment; symptoms of a row became manifest, an r immense crowd gathered round the bank It was then run mored that there was a "run on the Mechanics' Bank that e the bank had "stopped." The activity of the bank officers, e however, soon got over the difficulty, and the plan fell through e The returns of the banks to-day are as follows e New York City Banks
