MONETARY AND COMMERCIAL. Daily Southern Cross Office, Tuesday Evening.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXVI, Issue 4004, 22 June 1870, Page 3

MONETARY AND COMMERCIAL. Daily Southern Cross Office, Tuesday Evening.

Dulness continues to be the characteristic of tbe market, and until confidence is restored and discounts are easier we do not look for much improvement. No sales of importance have been held. Several lines have been placed in limited quantities at auction. Oats are firm at 3s Gd, and wheat 4s 3d ; bran is readily saleable at la Gd. The 'Flirt ' arrived to-day with a small cargo of grain to order from Canterbury. Several others are looked for shortly.

bUGAi*.— Dull. By auction, to-day, a parcel of Honolulu, in bond, was sold at 2.', d, 3*d, 3Jd, and 3|d, for low brown, yelloV, and light-yellows respectively. Java (good white crystal) sold at s^d, duty paid. Tea. continues dull. Parcels offered today by auction did not realise limits, and were withdrawn.

Provisions. — Auckland and Taranaki cheese, in good condition, sold at Sd ; butter, 9d. Bacon : Good and well-cured is saleable at 9dto lOd. A parcel fioin Waikato, of fine quality but not sufficiently cured, j realised 7d. Hams : Provincial are quoted lat same price as bacon ; English hams are preferred, and sell at Is 2d to Is 4d English ! bacon is fast gome out of use.

Ve&pa. Matches.— A parcel, more or less damaged, realised 4s 3d per gross.

Dk apery.— A sale <f weli-s ;3ected goo's was held to-day. The attendance was good and bidding spirited. The chief articles sold weie oil-baize, blankets, winceys, merinoes, and dress matetial. ! We cut the following from a Melbourne paper. It is a remarkable instance of the manner in which a custom, convenient and therefore submitted to, in a small community, may grow into an intolerable evil as transactions increase. The Argus, writing on the subject, says: — "To put the case in terms about which there can be no mistake : Let us suppose A to be the holder of wool lying in a Melbourne warehouse, or even, as has happened in some recent instances, in a more distant locality. A goes to B, a shipbroker, and, upon the mere description of his property, receives bills of lading, duly signed, and representing that there has been 'received, in good order and condition,' on board some good ship or other, wool, not one bale of which has yet been moved from the warehouse. C, the banker, is then induced, upon the faith of this fictitious document, to advance certain sums of money ; and to ooinplete the series of friendly frauds a marine insurance is effected upon the wool, which, is as yet innocent of the sea, and which may, after all, never be shipped in the vessel to which the bills of lading, the insurances, and the advances are attached. Owing to this extraordinary system of doing business, instances have occurred in which insurances have been paid on goods supposed, on the faith of the bills of lading, to be lost in one vessel, but which have subsequently arrived safely at their destination in another. It will bo seen tiiat the whole transaction, from beginning - to end, is based upon a lie. It arose years ago out of an innoceiat desire to expedite <1 business, and was harmless so long as kept v ■within its proper limits. When an English mail was leaving in the middle of » ship- - ment, bills of lading for the entire parcel were issued, to put the shippers in a position at once to secure their advances from the banks, and to enable the latter to remit the bills to their English representatives. Now, __ however, as we have shown, bills of lading, ~" purporting to be receipts for certain merchandise, are de facto nothing of the kind. They are shams, and all the complicated pro- „ ceedings which follow are knowingly founded \ upon delusive documents." "V Messrs. S. Coclirane and Son sold by auc- j± tion to-day, by order of the Registrar of the Supreme Court, leasehold property in Cookstreet known as the Royal Oak Hotel, for S( £175. The property was bought by the I mortgages. J Mr. S. Jones held a sale of Honolulu sugar, ex 'City of Melbourne,' at his mart, \ Queen-street, to-day. There was a good * ( attendance. ' S( Mi. B. Tonks held a sale of drapery at fl his mart, Queen-street, to-day. There -was +: a very good attendance, and satisfactory j prices were obtained. ■*■