I Presume It To Be
Quite Out Of The Question That The Shareholders Should Get Any
Interest Whatever On Their Shares For Years.
The company, when I
was at Montreal, had not paid the interest due to the Atlantic and
St. Lawrence Company for the last year, and there was a doubt
whether the lease would not be broken.
No party that had advanced
money to the undertaking was able to recover what had been
advanced. I believe that one firm in London had lent nearly a
million to the company, and is now willing to accept half the sum
so lent in quittance of the whole debt. In 1860 the line could not
carry the freight that offered, not having or being able to obtain
the necessary rolling stock; and on all sides I heard men
discussing whether the line would be kept open for traffic. The
government of Canada advanced to the company three millions of
money, with an understanding that neither interest nor principal
should be demanded till all other debts were paid and all
shareholders in receipt of six per cent. interest. But the three
millions were clogged with conditions which, though they have been
of service to the country, have been so expensive to the company
that it is hardly more solvent with it than it would have been
without it. As it is, the whole property seems to be involved in
ruin; and yet the line is one of the grandest commercial
conceptions that was ever carried out on the face of the globe, and
in the process of a few years will do more to make bread cheap in
England than any other single enterprise that exists.
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