24th April. Tue legitimate and laudable desire of every one whose earings enable him to "put by" at all, is sooner or later have his name inscribed in the books of the Bank of England as a creditor of the nation. Speculative as man may be, fond of having a " lookin" at mines and nitrates, the Kaffir circus or Mysore, Chile or Pahang, he wants to have at least a nest-egg in the sweet simplicity of what used: to be the three per cents; and everybody therefore who has any luck combi ed with a disposition to thrift must be interested in An Account of the Operations under the National Debt Conversion Act, 1888, and the National Debt Redemption Act, 1889, written by Mr. E. W. Hamilton of the Treasury, and noticed in the latest issue of the Economist. The story is told, says that journal, " by one who not only knows all about his subject, but can make the dry bones of statistics live, and knows how to interest as well as instruct"; and we propose to extract this morning some of the interesting points from the Economist's notice. he subject is of very general interest for while England is the creditor of every nation in the world that has drawn on posterity, the absolute security of our National Debt has made proud lords and kings from far all over the world the creditors of England.
Mr. Hamilton, who, as Mr. Goschen tells us, was "behind the scenes all the time", mentions that the amount of three per cent. stock to be dealt with when Mr. Goschen commenced his operations was, in round numbers, £558,000,000: and "the books of the Bank of England in which the stocks were inscribed showed that under the head of Consols there were 96,265 accounts, under the head of Reduced Threes 19,975, and under the head of New Threes 52,995; making a total number of 169,235 accounts of holdings, which varied in amount from £5,760,000 to the curiously swell sum of one nny."—Mr. Hamilton ought to have told us how the holder of one penny in the British funds got his interest—"More than half these accounts represented joint accounts: in other words, accounts of stock standing in the names of two, three, and four persons; and therefore involving far greater trouble than sole accounts." It is easy to imagine the task that it was to get some 200,000 holders to assent to the conversion. It was lightened, however, by the fact that the holders of 312 out of the 558 millions to be converted were in the habit of receiving their dividends through their bankers, "and the small commission of 1s. 6d. per cent., which Mr. Goschen wisely agreed to pay to agents, induced the bankers to take a good deal of trouble to bring the conversion under the notice of their customers, and to advise them on the matter. The commission payments (exclusive of the remuneration of the Bank of England and the Bank of Ireland) amounted in all to £232,845. The largest individual claim, represeuting £9,876,633 stocks, amounted to £7,407; the smallest individualclaim, representing £49 13s. 9d. stocks, amounted to 8d." Of course there was some trouble in settling the claims for this eighteen-penny commission, as bankers, brokers and solicitors were frequently interested in the same stock, and the stockholders themselves had to be appealed to to decide which was to get the commission. But there was still greater difficulty in identifying holders and avoiding mistakes, which will be easily appreciated, "when it is stated that, according to a calculation made not long before the Conversion Act was passed, the name of SsuTH recurred in the books of the Public Debt 5,429 times, that of Browy 2,478 times, and that of Joxes 2,190 times; and that there were found to be 524 Joun Smirus and 519
When the period expired during which stockholders were allowed to say that they wished to convert, there was £42,000,000 left unconverted, and this amount had to be redeemed. This was the most difficult part of the business, as not only was this a case of paying away money which could not be recovered if a mistake had been made, but "it was, us a rule, the least intelligent or most negligent lass of holders that bad to be dealt with." There were 36,000 stockholders to be found, every one of whom is supposed to have given "his address and likewise description, which last requirement at times evokes curious responses in the shape of physical details, anid the enclosure of photographs." Out of 68,800 notices posted, 12,700 came back through the Dead Letter office, for only about 1,200 of which fresh addresses could be found. Then many stockholders, it was found out for the first time, were dead; others had been receiving the money to which they were entitled, long after the decease of the trustees while in other cases holders of powers of attorney had been collecting dividends Jong after the stockholder had died, and were made to refund the money accrued since his death. "Someholderswereready to sign any form that was sent to them: others would sign nothing, Not a few rushed at the offer to be paid off in advance, and then never took the trouble to claim their redemption money for months afterwards, Many persons were reminded by the notices that they were owners of stock which they had been too careless to claim for many years while others were made aware, for the first time, that they had money in the funds", these windfalls amounting sometimes much as £1,000, with the interest that had accrued. 'I'he total amount for which, after everything possible had been done, no owners could be found was £8,246,141; which was credited to 10,900 accounts, which included more than forty holdings of over £10,000, the holding of one individual in the various stocks amounting to £187,598. It is difficult to imagine a man with a fortune in the funds of nearly £200,000 disappearing so completely. Mr, Hamilton speaks in deservedly high terms of the enormous amount of work done by the Banks of England and Ireland, and the able way in which it was done; and their remuneration was very inadequate to the trouble taken. Stories dealing with enormous sums of money are always fascinating, and Mr. Hamilton's book is evidently no exception to this rule.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.