The incoming Lord Mayor having done good work twenty years
ago in putting down the adulteration of foodstuffs, the L'ird Chief Justice seized the opportunity of his formal visit to the Law Courts on Wednesday to deliver a forcible denuncia- tion of a "far more insidious form of fraud,"—viz., that prac- tised in abuse of the law relating to the promotion of companies with limited liabilities. In illustration of the Protean char- acter of the evil, Lord Russell touched successively on over- tpitalisation, the lure of titled names, the foisting of utterly worthless concerns on the public, the practice of going to allotment on insufficient capital, and the fraud of the "one-man company." Such things, he declared, would be impossible if the boards of directors were always honest, intelligent, and independent men. It was time that public opinion should he aroused on this question, and he appealed to the Lord Mayor to assist in this direction by his example, by ostracising persons implicated in such concerns, and by advising legisla- tion. Lord Russell brought his speech to a sensational close by stating on the authority of the Official Receiver that in the years 1891-1897, reckoned inclusively, 228,159,482 "had :,een lost to the community, and had gone into unworthy pockets, made up of losses of creditors dealing with com- panies £7,696,848, and of loss to the wretched contributors ir shareholders £20,462,634." These figures, he added, only elate to companies wound up compulsorily.
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