OUR LONDON LETTER.

Evening Star, Issue 10339, 12 June 1897, Page 3 (Supplement)

OUR LONDON LETTER.

ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES. London, April 30. The 6ne collection of pictures made by the late Sir John Pender, which includes Turner's celebrated 'Mercury and Hoise,' is being dispersed at Christie's to-day. Several Australian virtuosos will attend the auction, and it is hoped Holnaan Hunt's • Two Gentlemen of Verona' and Millaia's 'Prescribed Royalist' will at least find their way to one of your public galleries. I hear Mr Hannay, the magistrate, sat for the head of Valentine in the former, whilst a young barrister, already well known among journalists and since greatly distinguished as a Cabinet Minister at the Antipodes, posed as Proteus. Lieutenant-general" St George Clarke's work on 'lmperial Defence,' which forms the first volume of Mr Francis George Heath's «Imperial Library' (we are nothing if not Imperial, nowadays) is a shps'op compilation, chiefly paste and scissors, and of littls value to "anybody. Its most iuteresticg feature is Mr Heath's preface anent the 'lmperial Library.' This, he states in superfine but slightly involved language, has been initiated " to bring home to the minds of the millions of our splendid Empire a knowledge of what they, as citizens in their huge commonwealth, are so proud to possess, and thus, it is hoped, may be built up by gradual means and at a cost that may come (hy easy instalment*) within the "pecuniary resources of the humblest of intelligent readers, a storehouse of information collected with one object and under one system, and ultimately it may be reasonably hoped there will be produced an Encyclopaedia Britannic such as no private person at present possesses." TUE SEW CANADIAN TARIFF.

The new Canadian tariff has been received' with rapture by the United Empire Tri'lea League and by Mr Rudyard Kipling. The latter considers it a big step forward towards a federated empire, and, l-tferring to Canada as ' Our L>»dy of Snows,' contributes a stirring poem on the subject to 'The Times.' You may gather the tenor from the following :

A nation spoke to a nation— A throne sent word to a throne: " Daughter am I in my mother's house, But mistress in my own ! The gates are mine to open. As the gates are mine to close, And I abide by my mother's house,'' Said Our Lady of the Snows. Bat how comes it we find Mr Rudyard KipHug, and not Mr Alfred Austin, playing Poet Lsurier, or I should say Pott Laureate ? The'St. James's Gazette'says:-—" Cobdenite Liberals of the ' Freetrade-or-oothing' type are still doubtful what they ought to think about Mr Laurier's great preferential tariff coup in Canada. They .. don't like to wink at Fairtrade, but thsy do like to think that Canada is having a Btnack at the Protectionist United States, and they are very much pleased, as political partisans, at the great score which Mr Laurier has made for Canadian Liberalism by his patriotic and Imperialistic policy." The : ' Daily News' departs so farfrom its economic "orthodoxy" as to admit that Mr Liurier has "struck a blow for common sense," but it only means that it i 3 common sense to retaliate on the ultra - Protectionist doctrines of Mr Dingley. "If they have not adopted Adam Smith, they have nt least dished Dingley." But it salves its Cobdeniie conscience by maintaining that *' when Fairtrader3 fall out Freetraders may come by their own." So long as that only means that it is common sense to give Freetrade to Freetraders, and that retaliation is justified in order to make other people give np the bounties by which they try to ruin a country which has become fossilised in its Freetrade "orthodoxy," we may even yet hail the ' Daily News' as a convert to the true "inwardness" of a preferential tariff. But if this is good in Canada, why not in Great Britaio ? THE FREi:OLI OF FINANCE. When at the close of the lengthy trial cf the Hansard Union directors in 1893 the exLord Mayor (Sir Henry Isaacs), with hi? brother (Joseph Isaacs) and Mr Horatio Bottomley, were handsomely acquitted a little scene occurred. Djring the twentyfour days'hearing Mr Bottomley, who conducted his own case with consummate ability, had been frequently complimented by the Judge (Sir Henry Hawkins) ou his forensic talents, and the Bar now crowded rcuad him and urged h ; m to be "called" and become one of them without delay. " You'll be a QC. in ten years, and fioni the first you'll have more work than you can do," said Sir Edward Clarke. "Broken man as lam to-day," replied Bottomley solemnly, " with only the wreck of my wife's dowry to begin life again on, I tell you I mean to make another fortune within three years, and to surprise the Hansard shareholders inside five." The bystanders laughed at what everyone felt to be a very characteristic piece of Bottomley bounce. But one man—the lawyer who had fought Horatio tooth and nail throughout mazes of complicated figures and issues—ejaculated almost involuntarily: "By heavens! I believe he'll do it." And Bottomky has done it. Wonderful, indeed, are the mysteries of modern finance. There are few Eecrets of that curious hocus-pocus that Horatio can't command, and by their aid and a fair modicum of luck he has not been long in making his "pile." Everybody in the City, of coarse, has known for some time that the man was getting on well. Bottomley doesn't hide his light under a bushel, but few supposed that he meant anything by flashy hints of reimbursing the most unlucky of the Hansard shareholders out of his own pocket. Here, again, however, Horatio has kept his word. On Monday he convened all those interested in the unlucky Hansard Uuion to announce to them that he had set aside a quarter of a million of his new fortune for their use. He has already given tbem privately and unostentatiously over thirty thousand pounds in relief of special cases. The quarter of a million is an additional round sum, and of this a hundred thousand pounds was to be distributed immediately in cash among the worst sufferers. 'The balance is to form a sort of endowment fund for the permanent benefit of all. It is not" reatitu tion" —Mr Bottomley naturally lays some stress upon that point. Not a penny of i t can be claimed from him. All is a free gift offered in fulfilment of a pledge or boast made in 1893.

Mr Bottomley would not be Mr Bottomley if he could have resisted turning this occasion to theatrical effect. His fellowsufferers in past misfortune—Sir Henry Mr Sinnett, and others—were with him on the platform, and iu the chair sat the official receiver of the Board of Trade, who was concerned in his case. This public officer testified that Mrßottomley's new fortune had not been made out of his savings on the old one. All the moneys he had received through the Union he had spent for the Union in the endeavor to avert the catastrophe of the wreck. Mr Bottomley simply made a fresh start in 1894, and, "through the medium of the Joint Stock Institute," he has "made money for himself and for everybody who had had business relations with him."

It was Horatio's "splendid hour of glorious life." Probably he will never experience each another. In the hour of adversity and as the good man straggling against odds he was fine, but on Monday he was simply stupendous. Then, as in 1893, he pronounced the Hansard Union done to death from the basest and most interested motives. The company dMn't fail; it "w; • commercially assassinated." Horatio now teeks to enter Parliament as a means of rendering " absolutely impossible a repetition of that great crime which wrecked the Hansard Union." This desire for a seat in Parliament is, with him, but a return to a first love. Just ten years ago fas he tells us in the autobiography I rev ewed for you in 1894), when he was but 82ven-and-tweuty, he contested the Hornsey Division of Middlesex as a Liberal. He lost the election, bat he won the esteem of his supporters and a silver tea service. Three years later he was able to describe himself as the owner of a West Eud residence and a little country retreat, and as one with the reputation of a giver of good dinners, of a teller of good stories, and of a "coming man." A year after that he was ruined, and in yet another year he was awaiting his trial. Looking at the magnitude of the transactions, the changes were as rapid as those of Fregoli, the quick change-artist at the Alhambra. Before the trial came on he

expressed hh hopes of its issue in these pro* -phetio words: "I may yet emerge riper in experience pud with name unsullied, to do something in the world to erase the blot, and perchance to relieve some of the suffering of a great catastrophe, the moral responsibility for which, before God, I disclaim." NEW ZEALASD MIXES. I am sorry to say that it is not possible to report any improvement iu tbr <•-.. ."iili-n of the mining market since last mail. New Zealandtrs are still " doll as ditchwater," and there are no indications whatever of a revival The tendency, indeed, is toward a still lower range of quotations. The falling away of prices may of course be a blessing in disguise, since it may tempt people to "have a little flutter" who have hitherto held aloof. And we know that once tLe first dip is taken speculation in mining like card playing, generally get* a pretty strong hold on most men. The London and Auckland Exploration Company, (particulars of which I sent out many mails ago) have, I learn, relapsed into a state of suspended animation, the directors considering that under the existing conditions it is useless to attempt to do business oa the lines proposed at the initiation of die company. So far as I caa ascertain, the L. and A.E. Company are not " bunged up' i —an elegant phrase used to denote entire dissolution—but the dace of commencing active operations has been postponed sine, die.

I hear, also, that the Austral-African Company's withdrawal from New Zealand is simply the outcome of the unsatisfactory condition of the mining market Some people said it was a question of cash, and others accepted the action of the company as an indication that the directors had no faith in the colony's goldfields. The latter explanation found favor in many quarters because it was well known that whatever the state of the finances of the company itself those at the back of it could find any amount "f money for anything they deemed good en ugh to associate themselves with. But, like most of us, these moneyed ones do not care to venture into business when the probabilities are that they will have to wait a long time before turning over their money at a profit; and, as 1 have already intimated, the Austral-African crowd could not see their way to making immediate profits out of operations in the colony. The most recent mining registration in connection with New Zealand is that of the cumbersomely - titled " Waitekauri West Cross Gold Mines, Limited." This concern (when floated) is to hare a capital of £150,000 in £1 shares, and the objects of the company are specified thus: —"Primarily to adopt and carry into effect, with or without modification, an agreement expressed to be made between Robert Jewell of the one part and P. J. Hays (as trustee for and on behalf of this company) of the other part, to acquire, hold, and work all or any part of the mines, undertakings, business property, and rights comprised in the said agreement, and generally to purchase, lease, license, take in exchange, or otherwise acquire any mines, miuiDg rights, claims, minerals, tailings, alluvial deposits, forests, water rights, lands, hereditaments in New Zealand or elsewhere, and to search ior, excavate, quarry, dredge, win, purchase, or otherwise obtain ores and mineral substances, and to crash, smelt, manipulate, treat, and prepare the same for market, to develop the resources of land by farming, building thereon, etc., to construct and maintain rail and tram roads, wharves, ga3, hydraulic and electric works, etc , and as company promoters, financiers, etc. The first directors—of whom there shall not be less than three nor more than five are G. Pearson, W. H. Jewell, J. Payne, A. Young, and A. W. Watson. Qualification, £2OO. Remuneration, £2OO per annum each ; chairman, £3OO. The Thames (N.Z.) Exploring Syndicate have also achieved registration. They will have a capital of £20,000 in £1 shares, and the objects arc to adopt an agreement with J. Paxraan, J. H. Van Rvd, and the United NewZealaud Exploration Company, Limited, and to cirry on the business of explorers, prospectors, miners, smelters, metallurgists, etc. Mr E. Jerome Dyer has obtained very influential support to his proposal for the establishment of an Australian Chamber of Miues in London. His General Provisional Committee contain the names of nearly ovevy prominent mining director known to us iu London, including the Eirl of Westmoreland, Lord Norreys, Sir Westby Perceval, Colonel Josiah Harris, Mr John Lowles, M.P., iSir iSomers Vine (he was sure to be in it), Mr Fredk. Button, Major Richard Heaver, Mr David Ziman, Mr R. Lukach, Mr J. W. Maclure, M.P. (director of no less than twenty-three public companies), and Phillip Mennell.