25th January.
Ar the sixty-fourth annual meeting of the P. and O. Company, held in London on the 13th ult, Sir Thomas Sutherland, the chairman, made one of his usual long and lucid speeches. It was perhaps longer than sonal, but there was no sacrifice of lucidity. te Logan by congratulating his shareholders on the fact that the operations of the company for the'year had resulted far better than wus expected. The return was equivalent lo an average of nine per cent "n the paid-up capital of the company, and was arrived at after putting £500,000 to depreciation, and writing off the book value of the Australia, inex-cus ably lost. The Australia cost some ten years ago £220,000, but she had been written down in the interval to £56,000. This year five per cent was written off the capital cost of the feet, with an additional sum of £123,000. During the year the company's fleet had been increased by 62,000 tons, at a cost of £1,700,000. Miny of the new steamers were very expensive ones, and stood in the books at something over £26 a ton. Notwithstanding this fact, and that the company in the last few years had sold several of its old vessels at breaking-up prices, the fleet now stands only at something more than £10 a ton, or, deducting fiom its value the company'y each reserves, at only £6 43, a tp. The company bad under con.tiucion sume 45,060 tons of ing, and since the report was in print had contracted for two more steamers of 8,000 tons each; so that in very little over two years the fleet bien increased by 120,000 tons, coos of upwards of £2,500,000, This had been necessitated by the new mail contract which, unfortunately is for only three years, and Sir Thomas noted the embarrassment caused to the Goverament through Australia deciding to enter into no contract for mails in which ships should be employed which carried Indian seamen or fi men, though these men are British subjects. Sir Thomas added that posily. the P. & O, Company would ave to abandon the Australian rail service altogether and put the steamers already employed on that service on a new direct line between London and China and Japan, a line which would undoubtedly bring back to the P. & 0, a large number of passengers who now travel by the German mail because they do not have to change at Colombo. The P. & O. Company in that case will not abandon the Australian trade altogether, but will carry their share of it in large mized p-conger and cargo steamers vid the Cape of Good Hope. The action of the Australians, provincial and unreasonable as it is, will be welcomed in China if it leads to the establishment of a through line of mail steamers between London and the Far East, and the final withdrawal of the handsome but obsolete boats which do servi e between Bombay and Shanghai until they are suld "at breaking-up prices."
Sir Thomas went on to make sone very interesting remarks on the seiZure of the Malacca by a Russian onrtiage of contraband g-erally. He cruiser, and on the question of the
said
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.