You don't realise the position of all Australian investment companies here when you plead for more money to be sent by the Northern. We cannot raise an additional pound of fresh capital just now; indeed, our difficulty is to tret our debentures renewed as they periodically fall due at reasonable rates. When our shares command the price of 15s to 16s for the 20s paid we are considered a marvel of success compared with the very serious discounts that our other New Zealand companies stand at. Your legislative proposals do not mend matters either. It is true there is considerable doubt here what their meaning is, and what their effect will be; but if the prevailing view that all such companies as ours will be increasingly burdened prove correct, you may look for all companies calling in their loans and contracting, if not altogether closing, their business, instead of launching out into wider development. We cannot ask shareholders to protect the morbidly dreaded liability of uncalled capital, with an annually declining profit and a never increasing dividend as the set off. To pay something like 4½ per cent, for debentures, with commission on renewals and all other expenses, and to get 6 to 6½ per cent, on your side is barely good enough to induce men to face attendant risks, which, in their present humour, they are not inclined to view lightly, however able you and I may be properly to gauge them. No new company would start under existing circumstances, or in the expectation of any early improvement. We need not wonder then if shareholders begin to kick against the perpetuation of companies by holding whose shares they feel they are running risk and getting very little if any compensating profit.

You know my connection with the Colonial Investment [unclear: a] Agency Co.

The process of liquidation is very slow and tedious, and I am not help thinking that the men at Dunedin, instead of hurrying a realisations, are simply obstructing them. No progress is being made. My own conviction is that no real progress will be made in recovering what money there is in the wreck till all control is take entirely from them, and put into the hands of a competent and page 19 disinterested man. It is of far more moment that the Company should make realisations, even on a low basis, than that we should be kept hung up in a state of suspense. Shareholders are groaning to get rid of their liability. What do you think? Could you reconcile it with your other engagements, considering the distance you are at from the field of operations, to undertake it? Or could you recommend any one who could do it? And what would it cost? Remember, I am writing entirely for myself, not having yet breathed this to another Director, and I wish you to clearly understand that I am merely enquiring for information, but without any responsibility whatever. But when I do attack this matter, as I must do. I wish to be armed with such information as I am now asking you to afford me.