The Oriental Bank.

Tremendous groans greeted a Mr. Adcock when he declared his opinion, at the Oriental Bank shareholders' meeting, in the Melbourne Exchange, that "Ten years would be occupied in winding up." As Hamlet says, "Though we do most potently believe the thing, it is not expedient to be here set down." Yet it is always best to study the blackest side in these affairs. With a bank in Chancery, estimates of time may be liberal, particularly with a bank like this, a London octopus, extending feelers to China, India, Australia, and the Mauritius.

Up to the last few years, Melbourne was a model city in banking. Our associated banks, the Union, Australasia, New South Wales, E. S. A., Colonial, National, London Chartered, Oriental, Commercial, and Victoria, presented an apparently impregnable front. They were supposed to form, indeed, one national bank, on the soundest foundation, mutual antagonism, tempered by an agreement as to rates of discount and interest.

When the Provincial and Suburban, and Australian and European, went to smash one after another, there was any amount of moralising on our admirable associated banks, but the downfall of the Oriental breaks the spell. The movement in favour of a National State Bank has been immensely strengthened by this catastrophe.

It is certainly a great reproach to the Government of this country that a mass of bank-notes, those of the Oriental, should have been allowed in circulation, and that, with a thunderclap, it should be announced that every one who held an Oriental note must find the same turned into waste paper. Look at the numbers of working men who were robbed by that stroke. The case afforded another illustration of the extraordinary patience of page 22 the poor dumb beast, Proletariat. A visitor to our shores, Miss Genevieve Ward, happened to "strike oil" with her first six. weeks at the Melbourne Princess' Theatre. Her takings went into the Oriental Bank, and remain there. This is sheer swindling—under the auspices and protection of Government.

The Victorian Agent-General failed to give the slightest warning about the position of the Oriental Bank. By some inexplicable hocus-pocus, the rumours in London affecting this bank were kept from percolating over the telegraph wires to Melbourne.

A painful feature in the case was that the Melbourne management, had been successful. A large number of excellent officials were thrown on their beam ends, after building up a profitable business. This was cruel, the sort of thing which discourages men, and breaks them down. The Oriental premises are now occupied by the Bank of New Zealand, which is working up a good Melbourne connection, like the City of Melbourne and the Federal.

An attempt to wind up the Oriental business in Melbourne, locally, failed. It was opposed by Mr. Watson, the largest Melbourne shareholder. Mr. Watson made a large fortune in Sandhurst mines, and has chiefly invested it in Melbourne property. He took the crash philosophically. About the most dramatic scene in connection with the downfall of the bank was the spectacle of another fuming Melbourne millionaire, at nine o'clock in the morning, with a horse and dray backed into the Oriental vault door, from which the safes containing his securities were hurriedly extracted. We will not forget, either, the distress of a well-known Melbourne solicitor, who made an affecting and impromptu appeal in court to the Equity judge, urging that he might be permitted to redeem £20,000 belonging to a young lady relative. It had been innocently laid within the maw of the Oriental Bank. Protest was useless. Away the money went to London.

This Oriental Bank crash has done a great deal of harm to the associated banks. Confidence in them is, we will not say shattered, but shaken. It is felt now that every tub stands on its own bottom. A quarter of a century ago, when a run took place on a Melbourne bank, then quite young, the other banks supported it. Money drawn out only went back straight, like an endless chain. The depositors tired of the game, though they kept it up until ten at night. The incident is still remembered of Sir John O'Shanassy jumping on the counter and haranguing the excited mob.

The terrible financial earthquake of the Glasgow Bank was watched here with complacency, but a whisper about any Melbourne bank will be enough to raise a panic nowadays. But page 23 no criticism, or sarcasm, will make auditors do their duty. They are under the thumb of bank directors. All is so nice and bland. Not for worlds would humble Mr. E. Andoee, the accountant, offend Sir Gorgius Midas, the Cock Salmon and Gold Bug of Finance. Mr. E. Andoee has a large family. "All is perfectly right, Sir Gorgius."

It is not that Mr. E. Andoee is dishonest. But he is in the same position as the stage banker in the play of "The Game of Speculation." Mr. Affable Hawk flourishes a handful of flimsies and says, "There is a million." The stage father hands over "a plum" in ready cash as his daughter's dot, without a moment's hesitation.

Now, you know, this is just like the position of your bank auditor. Parchments and papers are flourished before his eyes, with the statement, "These are the securities." "Oh, the securities! Very good; quite right." Until auditors really examine and weigh securities auditing will be only an empty farce. We have written about this until we are tired.

Apropos of banking, we would like to say a word about the building societies, which dabble in it. They are practically unchecked and uncontrolled. The word Permanent will turn into Evanescent. What a contemptible member of society is the building society enthusiast! The man who can only find his evening recreation at a building society! Rooting his snout in the hog-wash. These are they who devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers, for which cause they shall receive greater glorification. Cruelty which a Christian man dares not perpetuate individually he will effect as a member of a building society committee, where it is spread over a number of shoulders. Mr. Spenlow, in "David Copperfield," would have been so glad to promote David, but "Jorkins, sir, is inexorable." At the same time, David had reason to believe that Jorkins was a purely mythical partner.

When Miss Kelly was acting in America, she had cause, one evening, to question the solvency of her manager. So she demanded £50 arrears, to be paid into her lap before the curtain went up. The money was duly counted over to her, while the other performers looked on with their mouths watering. They knew the result. No salaries for them. This rose to our mind in reading that Mr. Justice Chitty ordered that the Victorian Government should receive nearly half-a-million, in one gulp, out of the Oriental Bank.