The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1858-03-16 00:00:00

BLANDFORD.

THE BLANDFORD OLD BANK,

The appointalent of a COrdMittee to re-investigate
Messrs. Oak and Snow's affitirs was a course calcu,
lated either to afford much future satisfaction to the
creditors and the public generally, or the reverse.
If the former, the investigation would be searching,
impartial, fearlessly conducted, and boldly published.
If the latter, it would be formal, surface.like, inde-
finite and inconclusive. Let the report laid before
the creditors on Thursday last speak for itself; and
let the public say whether the suspense to which
their minds have necessarily been subjected during
the investigation, is not fairly balanced by the dis-
closures which have resulted from the arduous and
responsible labours of the committee. It was to be
feared that the individual cases of all but criminal
wrong and ruinous leases, brought before the com-
mittee during their investigation, would induce
them to give a greater prominence in their report to
personal matters than to the general features mark-
ing Messrs. Oak and Snow's business transactions;
but, deplorable as these cases are, individually and
relatively, we are gratified to find that the report
most prominently deals with the causes of failure—
the absorption of profits, the foulness of mismanage -
meat, ruinous speculations, and the no capital of the
firm, rather than with facts less calculated to en-
lighten and warn the public mind, on the too-fre-
quently practised modes of illegitimate banking. It
should be kept in mind that the objects sought to be
effected by appointing the committee were not alone
that the dividend might possibly be increased and
secured, though these important considerations had
their weight in influencing the appointment; but
from a supreme desire operating on the minds of the
creditors to obtain, by the proposed investigation,
more reliable and fuller information than was afforded
at the first meeting, of the solvency or insolvency
of the bank during Messrs. Oak and Snow's partner-
ship, the manner in which loans averaging £2,000
per annum for the last ten years had occurred, and
by a rigid scrutiny to lay bare any circumstances of
their past or present pecuniary position likely to
confirm or dispel the doubts and suspicions reason-
ably entertained by the creditors. This the report
does, and more. It gives to the public a startling
view of what may be termed the inner workings and
mysterious movements of banking ingenuity—that
which is generally shrouded in obscurity and sadly
perplexes the minds of creditors when called toge-
ther to gather up the fragments of their all
but used-tip property. Self-preservation, we are
told, is the first law of nature, and Means. Oak
and Snow have unwarrantably extended the accepted
meaning of the idea to ensure so desirable a
consummation. Mr. Oak, it appears, has over.
drawn his account £7,000, and Mr. Snow £2,000
to £3,000. Truly it is a warning to the public not
to accept readily first statements made to creditors
suddenly called together, and a lesson to them of the
advisability of appointing a similar tribunal to the
one constituted in this cue to report to them the
real state of matters, before they come to a decision.