Ix the minutes published yesterday morning of the Committee meeting on Monday of the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce, there appears a letter from Mr. 8. L. Darby, the Acting Manager of the Bank of China and Japan, Lo, bringing to the notice of the Chamber the recent decisions of Chinese Courts in the matter of calls due from native shareholders of the Bank, and especially inviting attention to the bearing of these decisions upon the general interests of the foreign community of Shanghai. The facts of the case are well known, but, nevertheless, Mr. Darby gives a brief sketch of them. The Bank has been suing in the Mixed Court two representative Chinese shareholders for the recovery of calls made to enable the Bank to pay its depositors. "Phe persons proceeded against had signed the usual forms of 'I'rausfer, their names had been duly entered on the Register, and not only had all the conditions of legal liability been fully istled, but the defendants had, in dition, signed special agreements undertaking to pay calls on their shares, also agreeing that all questions between them and the Bank should be decided in accordance with the law of England. Nevertheless, both the magistrate of the Mixed Court and the Taotai of Shanghai declined to hear the cases."
Mr. Darby gos on to mention that each of the Chinese against whom proceedings have been taken has signed one or more special agreements, in addition to the ordinary instrument of transfer which ought to be sufficiently K. binding.
The position taken by the Mixed Court magistrate and the Taotai therefore means that Foreign Companies have no security for the performance by Chinese shareholders of the obligations incident to their position. "The decision of the ''taotai... can be used as a precedent for relieving Chinese of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.