It was announced late on Friday evening, the 2nd inst.,
that the Oriental Bank had closed its doorri. This Bank possessed a capital of £3,000,000 nominal, and £1,500,000 paid up, and a Charter limiting its liability, and till about six years since was the object of unbounded confidence in India, Ceylon, and
the Mauritius. Its shares at one time rose to twice their par value, its deposits exceeded 25,000,000, and there was scarcely a merchant or planter in Asia who had not business relations with the Bank. The-managers, however, as usual, is order to employ the deposits, began lending on the security of the gambling businesses called in the tropics " estates ;" bad years arrived, and they were unable to realise their securities. The public became aware of . these facts, and of certain heavy losses through speculations—one of them a speculation in silver based on a conviction that the bi-metallists would win the shares fell, depositors became frightened, and the directors, seeing that a revival was hopeless, closed the doors. The usual optimist statements are circulated ; but from the figures given in the Times it is probable that the remaining sum due on each share, £25, will be called up, and that depositors will not be fully paid. The amount of their loss, however, will de- pend upon the result of the sales of coffee and cinchona estates in Ceylon and sugar estates in the Mauritius, and on the amounts the mortgagees can extract from the Bank before the final liquidation to keep those estates, i.e., businesses, going. It is stated that £50,000 a month must be advanced by the share- holders in the Mauritius alone, merely to save the crops. The Bank was, in fact, the largest sugar-planter in the world,—a position its shareholders had, perhaps, scarcely realised.
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