The Sun.
London, England, 1870-04-11 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, APRIL 11, 1870

THE IMPERIAL LAND COMPANY OF
MARSEILLES.

(From the Anglo-American Times.)
Those who consider our remarks too severe on
Company-Ccncoction in England should read the
judgment of Vice-Chancellor MALINS in the case of
the Imperial Land Company of Marseilles. There
was a gang of harpies who, towards the close

of 1865 and the beginning of 1866, still clung
with a desperate tenacity to the profits of bub-
ble-floating, and its head-quarters was the Cre-
dit Foncier and Mobilier of England, with a Mr.
ALBERT GRANT as its leader—a sort of English
FISK. Mr. GRANT in New York would have played
the kind of financial game by which that grand
American operator has astonished the world, for
he is as fertile in resource, just as unscrupulous, as
reckless of consequences, and endowed with that
kind of courage which enables a man to play with
fortunes without any quickening of the pulse or a
change of colour, no matter how runs the luck.
Mr. GRANT became a moving spirit during those
days of enterprise ; and although the Stock Ex-
change did all it could to frown down what its mem-

bers knew to be frauds on the public, so infatuated
was that public, so skilfully did Mr. GRANT play his
cards that he kept up the game all through the panic,
and is now living on the Continent in luxury, smiled
on as the benefactor and regenerator of cities.
Those who visit Milan and see the magnificent series
of buildings recently there constructed cannot say

that Mr. GRANT'S mission has been wholly a failure.
If they go to Brussels they will find as useful works
and on as grand a scale ; and if they touch at the
port of Marseilles they will come upon the working
site of the company about which the Vice-Chancel-
lor delivered judgment last Saturday week. The
Imperial Land Company of Marseilles was among
the latest of these disastrous schemes floated. A
great deal of money had already gone, and much
more was rapidly- going, " where the woodbine
twinetb," while the time was quickly approaching
when " every man was to drag out his own corpse,"
to use the forcible and expressive language of the
American GRANT. And it was, perhaps, with this
knowledge in their minds that the Credit Foncier
" ring " so eagerly pressed the two or three last
affairs likely to be floated. In the one before us
they had a good juicy orange, which they were not
cont3nt with merely squeezing, for the greedy pack
bolted the whole, rind and all. It is curious to place
side by side theVice-Chancellor's recent judgment and
the First Yearly Report of the Company, presented
to the shareholders on the 28th February, 1867. Then
the directors bad satisfacti m in telling the share-
holders of the operations within that period. They
would recollect that, immediately after the introduc-
tion of the undertaking, the commercial world had
been overtaken by a severe crisis, which paralysed
many industrial enterprises. A company of such
magnitude and character could not expect alto-
gether to escape inconvenience and derangement ;

" nevertheless, the solid basis upon which the un-
dertaking was originally founded, and upon which

it still rests, has sustained it throughout the whole of
the trying period which it has traversed, and enables
your directors to report substantial progrcss to-
wards the objects for which the company had been
formed." Those are the words of the report ; let
U 3 now, by way of contrast, give those of the Vice-
Chancellor

" The prospectus issued stated that Sir JOSEPH
M'KENNA, Mr. HARVEY LEWIS, and Mr. HENSHAW, who
were now defendants, were directors of the company,
and they were also directors of the National Bank. Three
of the other directors—Mr. GRANT, Mr. HARnisox, and Mr.
WARNER—were also directors of the Credit Foncier and
Mobilier of England, and two of the directors—Colonel
JAME'S HOLLAND and Mr. SYDNEY STOPFORD - were els )
directors of the Agra and Mastermau's Bank. It lad
teen proved tha some time before the form iti ,n of the
comipany the directors bad entered into a contract t )
p .rchAse the land in question from Mr. JoRN MAsTEn.m.As
for the sum of £;,300,000, and that the sum of £774,500,
or, according to another acc.}unt, at least £650,000, was
added to the price of that laud, and that this aim was
either retained by, or distributed among, the different
persons engaged in getting up and concocting the com•-
puny, and it was not disputed that the Credit Foneier
got no less a sum than £3130,000 out of it, if not half a
million of money. Various other sums wore given away,
and it appeared that Mr. GRANT had got so much into
the habit of handling large sums that he gave away
£lO,OOO to one person, .£15,410 to another, and, in fact,
distributed sums of this magnitude with as much ease
as other people would have given half-crowns. The
laxity with which:all the affairs of the company ware
managed exceeded anything that could be imagined.
He had been surprised that the counsel for the two direc-
tors, Mr. HARVEY LEWIS and Mr. HENSHAW, had thought
it worth their while to argue that these gentlemen were
so inexperienced in the ways of the world and so utterly
ignorant of business transactions, and so reckless of the
way in which the money entrusted to them by the
shareholders should be applied, that they could have
undertaken to give £3,300,000 for land in a foreign coun-
try without any inquiry as to the real value of that land,
and that, in fact, they were not called upon as directors
of the company to inquire how an estimate of the value
of the land was arrived at."
The action had been brought by the three liquida-
tors (one of whom, Mr. SAMUELSON, had nearly been
ousted by the machinations of those implicated to
remove him, for he had a way disagreeable to them
of performing his duty) to recover £5,000 paid to
the National Bank for keeping the account of the
company at a time when the rate of discount was
10 per cent., and the amount belonging to the com-
pany on deposit ranged from £30,000 to £70,000.
It is instructive to compare the Vice-Chancellor's
decision with the words he used to show his opi-
nion about the transaction. He did not scruple
to imply that everything connected with the float-
ing of that company was a barefaced fraud upon
the public, yet he was compelled to give judg-
ment for the defendants. Here are his words :
"The facts of this case bad been several times before
him, and they presented transactions which he was bound
to say bad brought forward conduct Ns hich he thought
more dishonourable than anything which he bad ever met
with in his professional career. He bad seen a great
many disreputable things in relation to companies since
he had sat upon the Bench, but be bad never seen any-
thing more discreditable than the transactions which had
come to light in regard to the Imperial Land Company."
The Bank Directors had no case in equity, and his
Honour's opinion was that the objections raised by
the defendants did them very little credit. Mr.
JESSEL, who argued for the National Bank, " felt
the pressure of the case," and Mr. HARVEY LEWIS
" had made a most extraordinary statement." In
short, the case was as bad as it well could be—so
bad that even clever counsel could not put any
gloss on it, and no one felt it more strongly or
could have expressed it more clearly than the Vice-
Chancellor himself, yet, he was compelled to rule
against the liquidators and the wretched victims
they represented—the shareholders and creditors.
We say there is instruction in this curious fact,
and, one, investors ought to take to heart and
never lose sight of in their operations. We have
repeatedly insisted on the fact that the law is
on the side of the culprits, for company concoctors
must be very great bunglers if they cannot steal
according to statute. They have skilful attorneys
at their elbow, and whenever a doubtful point
arises it is referred to learned counsel. Thus they
move on, armed in a triple panoply of steel, crush-
ing the lives out of their victims in a way more
hateful, if less disastrous to the community, than
that adopted by the Erie clique. We say if lets
disastrous to the community, fur it is an of en point
wlether bribed judges violating the law, or " rings"
outraging every sense of justice and right in con-
spiracy with the law, be the mere pernicious spec-
icle. -If New York Judges are bringing the laiv
into contempt in America, and giving a direct en-

couragement to crime, the impunity with which such
scandalous transactions as those censured by Sir
R. MALINScan be carried out, is calculated to anni-