Arizona republican., 1898-02-07
FOREIGN GOSSIP.

At the meeting of the parliamentary inves tigation into the affairs of the British Chartered company, of South Africa, last summer, an attempt was made by one of it's members. MT Henry LabOuchere, to discover wheth- er there had been any extensive deal ings in the shares of the core 9rn by it's titled directors toward the end of 1895, which might be taken a.s iLdi- eating a previous knowledge On their
 par; Of the raid which took D ace dur ing the first week Of 1896. The Ques- | tion was barred by the friends of the directors i1 question, with whom th5 parliamentary commission had ca e. fully Leen packed by the government. Since then MT. LabCuchera, who, it must not be forgotten, is, although 2 radical in politics, an aristocrat by birth, being nephew of Lord Taun- ton, has been quietly pursuing his in quiries and has finally secured au thOritative returns, showing that the
 prince of Wales son-in-law, the duke of Fife, who had sworn that he han no knowledge beforehand of the raid, had sold 4C00 shares immediately be-
 fore the raid took place, that tEe Guke
 of Abercorn had disposed of an equal
 number of shares about the sam time, that Lord Gray had sold 1000
 shares, Lord Clifford 10000 shares, end
 Sir Horace Farquhar, who las just
 been elevated to the peerage, 15,000
 shares.
 Now all of these peers were 61 ec
 tors of the company, and almost posi-
 tive in their testimo y that the rad
 which sent down the shares with su h
 frnY ,dn O a o cfJ
 prise for them Why, then, did they
 sell with such touching unanimi y,
 and about the same time?
 What makes the matter consider
 ably worse, and the entire transac- tion appear infinitely more dishonest
 is the fact thal the greater part of the
 shares cost the directors in question
 next to nothing, having been dis'r:b
 uted pro rata among the original
 share holders of the company when
 the stock was watered. Moreover, he shares when sold had been ar ific'ally pushed up to an enormous premium, namely, at nearly 1000 par cnt These shares are today worth next to nothing, the promises contained in the prospectus of the Chartered company and of it's various affiliations no. hav- ing been fulfilled. In fac, the con- pany itself has made no m.ney, and the only people who have got any, thing out of it seem to have been MT. Cecil Rhodes and his title fellcw di rectors, their profits being derived %ot from the company's enterpri ses, but entirely from the pockets of the present investors, who were so foolish as to purchase at big D remium shares in @ concern that can never pay.
 The sale of the magnificent library of the late Don Balthazar Boncom- 1 pagnia, prince of Piom bino, duke of Sora, and posse essed of heaven on'y l knows how many other great digni- 1 ties besides is about to take place at | the Genet palace in Rome. It num- ! bers 150,000 volumes, and is comp posed ] almost exclusively of unique and price less works on mathematics About | bought the Piombino palace belong ing to the old prince, in order to de- moish it, and thereby wid n the Corso at the Piazza Colonna
 The owner proposed to the authcri-i i ties to bequeath to the city his mag nificent library on hls death, if they i would only wait until then bsfore tearing down his palace. Fearing that he might live another score cf years they declined his offer, which they certainly would have acceps ed had they known tat he would ave been gathered to his fa thers within three years afterward. The princes name will remain on record as ore of the most eminent mathematic ans of the present century in spite of which he died a ruined man, having lost his money through building specula ions, like so many other great Roma nobles.
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