The Sun.
London, England, 1867-05-23 00:00:00

not bear this weight—and so the whole concern

dropped into the Bankruptcy Court. Here, then,
was a manufactory represented as prospering, and
which, if left undisturbed, might have continued to
prosper, bringing ruin on its proprietors, and on its
bona fide shareholders, from a cause totally uncon-
nected with the casting of guns under BLAKELY'S
patent its ostensible business. What human
being could have imagined that on the price
of Pekoe hung the fate of Blakely's Ordnance

Company (Limited) ? What wretched share-
holder could have thought that the worth of his
shares mainly depended upon a China commer-
cial establishment? Perhaps a confused ides might
have arisen in his mind that he, as a Blakely Ord-
nance man, had some connection with the tea
called pnpowder; but had he been told that his
foundry depended on Souchong, silks, and opium, he
might well have stared in incredulous wonder.
Ilad the manufactory been really good—of which

we know nothing--the man who understo most

of its profitable nature would have been the most
dec,,ived, and it is this fact that we wish to urge
on public attention. Of course neither Captain
BLAKELY nor Mr. DENT would tell the real causes
which induced them to form the company, and

in ignorance of these, a knowledge of the manufac-
ture would have been most dangerous to the in-
vestor, as well as to the friends he could influence.
Let no man, therefore, imagine that he fully un-
derstAnds the subject, because he is filly informed
of the nature of an undertaking, and of its profits.
And as long as the present commercial standard
of morality obtains, let no man feel sure of the
honour and good faith of men, however high, com-
mercially, may be their position. Capt. BLAKELY
writes as if quite unconscious of the real nature of
the transaction.

It was surely his business, as Managing Direc
tor, to know how the shares were placed ; and
though he speaks of giving over the valuable pro-
perty to a bubble company, he slvnild bear in mind
that he himself was the Managing Director of this
bubble Company. According to Capt. BLAKELY,
Mr. JOIIN DENT was the primary cause of the ruin.
The difficulties of the China house was the reason
of the formation of the Company, as well as of
the mode in which it was launched. Mr. DENT'S
object was to obtain as large an amount of ready
money as possible, and, by Captain BLAKELY'S
own showing, he acceded to the proposal. The
ostensible reason, as announced in the Prospectus,
was "to supply the adequate capital for the great
increase of business." "As an evidence of their
confidence in the undertaking," says this document,
" the vendors have agreed to guarantee that the
profits of the undertaking shall amount to a sum to
pay a minimum dividend at the rate of £l5 per
cent. per annum, for three years, on the paid-up
capital for the time being of the present issue of
shares." Considering the circumstances in which
Mr. DENT was placed, it must have been pretty well
known to Captain BLAKELY what the guarantee was
worth. Yet he does not hesitate to state that " the
creditors will join with me in the deepest sympathy
for Mr. JOHN DENT, and the conviction that he,
least of all, is to blame for our misfortune." We
wonder if Captain BLAKELY understands the mean-
ing%f his own letter. flow can he reconcile this
paragraph with a preceding one which follows a
flourishing description of affairs before the manufac-
tory became the property of the Limited Joint Stock
Company. " All this prosperity," he says, " was
sacrificed in the endeavour to save Messrs. DENT
and Co. (in the news of their losses reaching Mr.
JOHN DENT, he persuaded me to sell our business to
a limited company, and he refused to allow the
highly respectable firm of CAZENOVE to bring it
out, because they would not guarantee the placing
of as many shares as he required, to furnish him with
a large sum of ready money to take to China.
11 e contracted with another party, and the conse-
quence was, that in two months three .fourths of the
shares in this company were in the hands of dummies."
We have told this story at greater length than our
columns justify, because it c intains a lesson which
we should all lay to heart. We see another throng
brought to ruin from precisel the same cause that
involved hundreds of families in the OVEREND-
GURNEY swindle. The public are sacrificed in
hecatombs in the attempt to save grand houses, and
the people who sacrifice them appear to be quite
unconscious of the iniquity of the transaction. No
punishment seems to follow, or even a moral slur
We should be guarded at all points—and should
never forget, that the law of limited liability, as it
now stands, is but a license to Rob.—Anglo-Anieri-
can Times.