Pointing To Some Boxes In His Private Room One Day, Mr.
Maynard Said:
"There are years of Chancery in those boxes, if anyone
else had them." And he more than once quoted a phrase of the "old
bear":
"My fortune came late in life."
On the 8th May I went to see the Duke. He was very ill; but his
interest in the Hudson's Bay purchase was unabated. I saw him again on
the 15th, and wrote a letter to the Hudson's Bay Company. On the 19th
Mr. Maynard told me that the Hudson's Bay Court were meeting that day
to reply to my letter. The reply came on the 21st, and was "nearly what
we wished."
Owing to the Duke's illness, and to some secret difficulty which he
never enlightened me upon, I was given to understand, after a short,
but anxious delay, that any purchase must be carried out by private
resources; but all sorts of moral support would be at our service. What
good was moral support in providing a million and a half? What was to
be done? There were only two ways: one, to make a list of fifteen
persons who would each take a "line" of a hundred thousand pounds for
himself and such friends as he chose to associate with him; the other,
to hand the proposed purchase over to the just founded International
Financial Association, who were looking out for some important project
to lay before the public.
Leaving out Mr. Baring and Mr. Glyn (senr.) we had a strong body of
earnest friends, substantial men, and we could, no doubt, have
underwritten the amount. My proportion was got ready; and my personal
friends would have doubled that proportion, or more, if I had wanted
it. I strongly recommended this course. But the Hudson's Bay Company
would give no credit. We must take up the shares as presented and pay
for them over the counter. Thus, the latter alternative was, after some
anxious days, adopted. Mr. Richard Potter was the able negociator in
completing this great transaction, began and carried on as above. The
shares were taken over and paid for by the International Financial
Society, who issued new stock to the public to an amount which covered
a large provision of new capital for extension of business by the
Company, and a profit to themselves and their friends who had taken the
risk of so new and onerous an engagement.
I may finish this section by stating that, as respects the new Hudson's
Bay shareholders, their 20l. shares have been reduced by returns
of capital to 13l., and having, nevertheless, in the "boom" of
lands in the West, been sold at 37l. as the price of the
13l.; they are now about 24l. Thus, every one who has
held his property, and will continue to hold it, has, and will have, a
safe and unusually profitable investment. These shareholders, besides
the large reserves near their posts, which I shall enumerate later on,
have a claim to one-twentieth of the land where settlements are
surveyed and made.
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