The Sun.
London, England, 1857-11-12 00:00:00

THE ROYAL BRITISH BANK.

A meeting was held last evening at the:Guild-
hall Tavern, in pursuance of a circular suggesting
that the shareholders should then meet to take
into consideration the propriety of subscribing the
sum necessary to carry out an arrangement under
which the creditors had consented to accept Cs. 6d.
in the pound, in addition to 10s. in the pound ac-
cruing from the estate.

After considerable discussion,
Mr. R. P. HARDING the official manager, said
the sum required was 180,000/. Of this, 65,000/.
had been subsoribed ; and, without referring to
other shareholders, thre were 69 who held 519
shares, from whom no offer whatever had been re-
ceived. Steps had been taken to ascertain the names
of these parties, and it was calculated that a sum of
113,0001. could be obtained from them. It was
suggested that Messrs. Gillott, Mitchell, Harding,
and other gentlemen should retire into a separate
room and receive proposals. At the termination of
these interviews, Mr. Harding reported that, in ad-
dition to the 65,0001. already referred to, 27,0001.
had been promised by former shareholders, 4,000/.
by Mr. Stapleton, the only director who had as yet
subscribed, and 11,700/. by the 69 shareholders to
whom reference had been made. This made the
amount 107,700/. out of the required 180,0001.,
and Mr. Harding expressed himself as having no
doubt that the required amount could be got.
Mr. PEARSE said he felt, after this, that the as-
signees were in a position to deal with every share-
holder as his case required, and that there should
be no delay in prosecuting their claims upon share-
holders who had not as yet contributed.
Mr. LINKLA.TER observed that the 27,000/. pro-
mised by the original shareholders was conditional
upon the other shareholders making up the required
180,000/. The assignees would give a release to a
shareholder who they felt had contributed accord-
ing to his ability, but they would never allow a
man to escape by payment of 5001. when he ought
to pay 5,000/. While there were shaieholders who
had not contributed anything, there were others
who had not contributed their due portion.
It was ultimately resolved that Mr. Harding
should communicate with shareholders who had not
subscribed, stating to each the amount that would
probably secure him a release, and urging him to
return an answer within seven days as to his willing-
, ness to pay that amount : and that Mr. R. Taylor
(one of the assignees), and Motors. Gillott and
Mitchell, two of the shareholders, assist him in car-
rying out the resolution.

It was stated during the proceedings that Mr.
Brockwell, who had succeeded in obtaining the re-
moral of his name from the list of contributories,
had still proposed to pay a sum to obtain a release.

TRIAL OF THE DIRECTORS OF THE ROYAL
BRITISH BANK.

Yesterday an application was made at chambers
before Mr. Justice Crompton by counsel, on behalf
of several of the defendants in this case, for parti-
culars of the charges to be preferred on the several
counts of the indictment, which consists of general
as well as of specific counts. Mr. D. D. Keane, Mr.
Coleridge, and Mr. Aspland appeared as counsel for
the defendants, and the crown was represented by
Mr. Joseph Brown. The application was opposed
on the ground that thcugh the special counts con-
tained overt acts, yet the charges in the special
counts were precisely similar to those in the general
counts, and the application was therefore an appli-
cation for the disclosure of evidence. Counsel for
the Crown, however, stated that he had put into the
indictment all the overt acts which he knew of,
such being the instructions of the Attorney-General,
and that if he should become acquainted with any
further overt acts before the trial he would apply
to amend the indictment by inserting them, but he
would give no undertaking to do so, or to confine
his evidence to the overt acts mentioned. To this
it was replied that the enumeration of the overt acts
in the indictment was an embarrassment instead of
a benefit to the defendants unless they were assered
that none other would be sprung upon them at the
trial. The learned judge was of opinion that so
important a case as this ought to be taken to the
full court, but his impression was against granting
the order, inasmuch as the counts, in his opinion,
did not contain specific charges. but only varied in
this, that some stated overt acts as well as specific
acts, while others contained specific charges only.
It was then pointed out to his lordship that the
last count in each information was too general, as
it did not contain any specific charge, and he made
an order for particulars as to that count alone.
Three informations have been filed against the
defendants, because some of the persons named in
the different information', are not liable with re-
spect to the whole of the time for which the others
are. These informations, which have been filed at
the instance of the Attorney-General, are laid
against Humphrey Brown, Edward Esdaile, Henry
Dunning M‘Leod, Lorraine de Wolfe Cochrane,
Richard Hartley Kennedy, William Daniel Owen,
John Stapleton, Hugh Innes Cameron, Lockhart
Mure Valiant, and Frederick Valiant. The first
count, which, in fact, charges the material offence,
is that the defendants fraudulently conspired to re-
present that the affairs of the British Bank were in
a prosperous condition during the whole of the year
1855 and the half of the year 1856, and for that
purpose, in order to carry out the conspiracy, to
publish a statement of the affairs of the bank, to
declare a dividend, when, in fact, no dividend had
been earned, to issue 500 new shares when they
well knew that the bank was approaching insol-
vency, and to publish false abstracts of the annual
balance sheets. It further charges that they
did in fact publish such false statements, that
they had paid dividends, as if they had been earned
by the operations of the bank which had never in
fact been earned, that to keep up the credit of the
bank they purchased shares in the market and paid
for them out of the moneys of the bank ; that they
issued circulars falsely stating that the bank was
prosperous, and published advertisements inviting
persons to become shareholders with the like object,
and had also published a notice that they were about
to issue a large number of new shares at a 5/. pre-
mium. With the exception of the last count, each
information which is a general court to cheat the
statements in the several counts are varied with
respect to shareholders, customers to the bank, and
leige subjects generally, the object charged being
to defraud by inducing such persons to buy new
shares or to deposit money in the bank.
No day for the trial has yet been fixed, nor is it
even yet known whether it will be a trial at bar
or not.

It has been definitely arranged that neither the
Attorney-General nor the Solicitor-General will
take any part in the trial, and that Sir Frederick
Thesiger will lead the prosecution on behalf of the
crown. We understand that upwards of 50 coun-
sel have been retained for the prosecution and
defence ; and, from the voluminous nature of the
evidence to be adduced, the trial will probably last
three weeks.

A considerable number of German emigrants of both
sexe-i visited on Sunday the Louvre and other public
buildings of Paris. They nearly all left in the evening
by railway for Havre.