The Sun.
London, England, 1856-09-16 00:00:00

IRELAND.

DUBLIN, MONDAY EVENING
TIIE TIPPERARY BANK.

The Freeman's Journal has the following state-
ment, which is .well calculated to revive the state
of anxiety which existed here among the numerous
parties affected, or likely to be, by the failure of
the Tipperary 13ank. After the favourable decisions
in the cases of the English shareholders many Irish
proprietors, who supposed they had been equally
the victims of that vile swindle, conceived that the
justice of their defence would save them from fur-
ther litigation ; but it appears such is not the fact.
The official manager is resolved to push the powers
of the law to the utmost against every, one who has
not a decree in his favour. The Freeman's Journal
says :
" We have been informed, on what we be!ieve t) be
first-class authority, that it is in contemplation to issue
over 1,000 wilt i at the suits of creditors of the Tipperary
Bank next term."

Wo regret we are in a position to strengthen this
statement. The list of intended victims is ready,
and the writs will be served, if possible, so as to
have them available early next term. In reference
to the affairs of this bank, the Freeman's city cor-
respondent makes some valuable observations,
which are subjoined :

" The winding-up of the affairs of the Tipperary Bank
is not progressing with that satisfaction which was ex-
pected, and there is every prospect that unless some vig-
orous efforts be made by the unfortunate creditors to
secure a rapid and less litigated adjustment, law costs
will absorb all the moneys hereafter to be recovered from
the shareholders. We do not attribute any blame to the
oTzial manager or his very able solicitor, fort dead lock
to which matters seem to be tending, and weave every
confidence that it extrication be possible it will be effected
by these gentlemen. The conclusion is, however, rapidly
forcing itself on the public, that the preseat state of the
•law is altogether insufficient for such a case, and that
both parties, creditors and debtors, would find the practi-
cal application of the ordinary commercial practice, and
a little common sense, safer and more beneficial than
legal quibbles, and the protracted litigation to which
they inevitably lead. In these views we are strongly
sustained by the opinions so powerfully urged by the
highest commercial authorities in England in reference
to the recent catastrophe in London, which presents so
many features of similitude to the Tipperary crash. The
aspect assumed by the affairs of our Irish swindle is
becoming so serious to the mass of depositors and other
creditors that we feel it right to place before them
somewhat more in detail than would otherwise be re-
quisite the leading features connected with the
failure of the Royal British Bank, or rather of the
courses taken by the shareholders and creditors of the
establishment, whose failure hai created such a panic in
monetary circles in London, and which continues to oc-
cupy so large a share of attention from the leading com-
mercial journals. The fact of the failure of the Royal
British following; so quickly on that of the Tipperary,
and on that of Strahan, Paul, and Co., has very natu-
rally led to a careful examination of the state of the law
as it is applicable to such concerns, and the leading au'ho-
rities have all arrived, after a careful scrutiny of cir-
cumstances of the three great failures, and of the slow,
harassing, and costly litigation which threatens to eat up
all the produce of the Tipperary wind-up—leaving
nothing, not even the falling crumbs to the creditors after
the lawyers' sumptuous feast—that the law must be so
modified as to enable the creditors of such concerns
qu'ekly, and with certainty, to realise and divide such
assets as may exist, and in case of their failure to make
the unlimited liability of joint-stook bankers a tangible
reality, not a sham, as it is under the present tedious
process of realisation, which affords so many opportuni-
ties for making away with property before the creditors
can come at it. The points of similarity between the
Tipperary and the Royal British are sufficiently nume-
rous and sinking to arrest attention, and to cause those
interested in one to watch with anxiety all the pro-
ceedings in thei other. In the first place the share.
holders and creditors in both banks belonged prinei•
pally to the industrial class to whom the effects of
the temporary withholding of their 'capital is almost
equal to its total loss. Like the Tipperary, the Royal
I British issued a prosperous' report, and declared a divi-
dend on the very eve of bankruptcy, modestly limiting
it, however, to 4 per cent. In both cases the large ad-
' vances to bank officials, or, in other words, an approp-
riation of the funds to their own purposes by those en-
trusted with the management of the subscribers' capital,
' was the reputed cause of the disaster, and in both cases
the shareholders are in a position to divide the public
sympathy w,th the creditors.

. _
" The amount of the subscribed capital said to be lost
in the case of the Royal British Bank is 150,0001., and it
is co.l,puted that the shareholders must submit t 3 an
additional loss (even under the compromise which the
creditors propose, in order to avoid law and its ruinous
delays) of nearly an equal amount. So far the analogy
holds good ; but from the amount of the crash the course
pursued by all parties interested in the banks respectively,
has been as dissimilar as possible. In London the share-
holders and the creditors have adopted courses the very
opposite to that part,ued in Ireland ; and though we tror
from time to time given in our news columns ample de-
tails of these proceedings, we will here repeat the leading
points of contrast between the two courses. The share-
holders in the Royal British Bank met at once, acknow-
ledged their i-esponsibility, and intimated their intention
to subscribe, without the intervention of law, such sums
as would appease the creditors for the present, by enab-
ling them to pursue their respective avocations, and to
enter into such further arrangements as would prevent
their having recourse to litigation, which might prove
alike ruinous to creditor and debtor. The creditors
having arrived at the conclusion that a wholesale re-
course to law would only add to their losses resolved to
use every effort to keep all parties out of litigation by
seeking a frank and prompt adjustment with the share-
holders in the spirit of mutual concession. Both parties
have in this case acted on sound commercial principles ;
and if the lawyers do not interfere, as we fear they still
may, a settlement satisfactory to both parties may be ar-
rived at. It is greatly to be regretted that the same frank
and honourable course wasnot adopted by theshareholders
of the Tipperary Bank, and none will have to deplore it
more bitterly than themselves. Instead of combining
to inset the difficulty manfully, they availed themselves
of every. quibble to evade their responsibilities and to
gain time, thus exasperating the creditors, and giving to
extern parties opportunities for goading there on to rash
and reckless litigation, in which, though the law may in
the en.l prove itself a Samson to the utter annihilation
of the shareholders, it will assuredly also overwhelm the
creditors themselves in the general rain it will effect."