The Sun.
London, England, 1867-06-04 00:00:00

RAIL WAY BILLS.

Yesterday, in Lord Redesdale's Committee, the
Rathkeale and New3astle Junction Bill was passed,
with amendments, and the Great Northern Bill was
adjourned until next Monday.
In the House of Commons' Conimittee, Group
12, the London, Chatham, and Dover Bill was ad-
journed, the London, Chatham, and Dover Bill
(No. 3) was proceeded with and adjourned, the
London, Chatham, and Dover Bill (No. 2) was ad-
journed, as was also the London, Chatham, and
Dover Bill (No. 4).

The report of the superintendent of the New
York and New Haven Railroad for the past year
shows the entire receipts for transportation to have
been $2,068,260, $1,612,628 from passengers, and
$333,381 from freight, and the expenses $1,364,243.
Deducting
$129,120 as interest on bonds and
$30,705 for loss in operating the Canal road, the
net profits are $544,191. The company has paid
two 5 per cent, dividends during the year, one on a
capital of five, and the other of six millions. Last
year 1,885,898
passengers were carried over the
road, and in the past eleven years 14,350,706,with-
0ut' an accident resulting in loss of life or limb.
The present Legislature will charter the Ridge-
field and New York Railroad Company, with au-
thority to construct a road from Ridgefield to the
New York state line, intersecting with the New
York and New Haven road, and providing railway
facilities for the western portion of Fairfield
county.
Charles F. Pond, president of the Hartford and
New Haven Railroad, died of paralysis at his
residence at Hartford, Friday evening, May 17th,
aged 57. He had been president of the road for
25 years. . .

Bangor voted, Wednesday May 15, 957 to 27, to
take $200,000 stock in the Bangor and Piscataquis
Railway. The Piscataquis town will probably take
$150,000 more and Bangor will loan her credit for
$500,000.

The New York Association for the Advancement
of Science and Art are endeavouring to send another party
to Brazil. Dr. Brown and Professor Hart want to go,
Professors Verrill and Agassiz think it will be well that
they should, and the only difficulties are financial ones.

CAPTAIN BLAKELY.
-4.-

It is not surprising that Captain BLAKELY should
feel aggrieved by our article of the 18th May. We
willingly publish his letter, together with one in
answer to Mr. CHAMLEY. Judging by the docu-
ments forwarded with these we have little doubt
that Mr. DENT realised and carried to China a large
sum, obtained on bills, bonds, and shares of the
company. Our remarks were based on Captain
BLAKELY'S letter to the 7irnes. Had any one
else written it, we would have passediche assertions
unnoticed. But we were struck with the example
thus given, and by the singular tale so naively told.
We have no doubt that Captain BLAKELY was the
great sufferer; and it is clear that in involving
others in the misfortune he acted in good faith
and unconscious of evil. From his boyish
days, when he entered the academy of Wool-
wich to the period when he had worked
out the patent for the gun that has made him
celebrated, he had mixed among men to whom
trade was unknown with all its demoralising
influences. Probably absorbed in the scientific and
mechanical details of his manufactory he had given
little heed to the rest, and was perhaps unqualified
to bring out a company on a solid and sure basis.
At any rate, from the moment that he sanctioned
the design which turned the firm into a limited

liability company, the proceedings form a chapter ,
of errors. He asks if we or any of our readers
could seriously entertain the notion that he could
have consented to do a very foolish thing. We do
not presume to answer for our readers, but fOr our-
selves we reply—certainly. For Captain BLAKELY
must be a singular exception to a very general rule
if he is incapable of acting against reason and
common sense. The working of the law of
limited liability has dissipated some delusions on
this subject. Men are not now so much surprised
at each other's, as at their own folly. Let Captain
BLAKELY trace back in his mind the successive
acts by which he turned a most profitable
business into a most ruinous loss, and say if he can
detect no insane doings. He always terms this
failure a misfortune—and so it was ; but that style
of misfortune by which a man breaks his neck, who
precipitates himself from a height. Is it conceiv-
able, he further asks, that Mr. JOHN DENT would
have left such a weight on him if he had known
the hollowness of the company before he left
England ? We again answer—certainly ; he would
have left twice the weight if he could have got the
money to save his house, for in doing that, he would
have thought, he was saving all. Such a manu-
factory as the BLAKELY ordnance ought to have
commanded a ready sale for the shares. When
the applications are numerous, the directors find no
difficulty in allotting them so as to place them in
the hands of bona fide holders. If not numerous,
the company ought not to be formed. The
proprietor must Have neglected to exercise the autho-
rity unquestionably his, if he had not an all-potent
voice in this matter. The greatest surprise to us is
that so profitable a manufacture, should be suffered
to sink into this hopeless ruin. Money is cheap and
plentiful ; the shareholders who will not pay calls
may forfeit tbeir shares and others be substituted ;
or the manufactory might, one would think, return
to the hands of the patentee. Defence committees
are generally the last device for extracting the last
crumbs for the harpies generated under this fatal
Act. Captain BLAKELY interprets what we said, as
selecting his company, as one of the worst formed
under the new statute. This was not our intention ;
we repeat we knew nothing of his company except
from the facts published by himself. There are
companies whose histories we do know, and which
some day we may tell, and our remark was in
allusion to them. But in this instance we took
his own letter as our text, and told the simple
story, which, though painful to a gallant offi-
cer, is truthful, we believe, in the main. It
appears that the credit of joint-stock companies
had fallen to so low an ebb, that the advances on
orders for the expensive castings were denied to the
limited company which had been freely made to the
private firm ; and to this cause, and not to the
failure of DENT'S house, the bankruptcy of the joint
stock undertaking is attributed. But here the ques-
tion arises, Whence came the liabilities? Simply,
we believe, from the large advances obtained by Mr.
DENT from the sale of his share of the property.
Had Mr. DENT been able to take up the disho-

noured paper of the limited concern, the foundery
would have reverted to its original proprietors.
Captain BLAKELY' naturally shrinks from having
his name associated with so disastrous a failure, more
especially in America, where he has many friends.
We.are aware that he has been by far the greatest
sufferer, and that he occupies a very different posi-
tion to those who have profited by the ruin of others
who reposed trust in them. If we have done him
any injustice, our columns will be freely opened for
an explanation, and we trust we will ever be anxious
to acknowledge frankly where we have been led into
error, actuated, as we are, by the wish to divulge
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth.—Anglo-American Times. •