AUSTRALIAN BANKING.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 537, 26 June 1869, Page 4

AUSTRALIAN BANKING.

Some of the oldest Australian banks have lately been lectured in our leading journals for their alleged departure from sound banking principles and practices. The accusation is, that they have allowed colonial produce (and especially wool) to be consigned to their agents in London, and the shareholders are warned of the disastrous consequences likely to ensue from such transactions. A leiter from a writer ia the Economist, however, places the subject in a different light, and attempts to show that the business of a bank having its chief clients in the colonies, with branches far in the interior, among squatters and sheep-farmers, must of necessity differ materially from the restricted form of banking proper to the London and Westminster and similar establishments. Still, if the warning inspires caution, it will not be a matter of regret. The squatter must be assisted during the clipping season, and consignments may be not imprudently made to the local banks' London agents ; but it was insinuated in the Times that some of the banks had gone deeply into wool speculations. Were there any truth in thiß assertion, it would indeed be time for the shareholders to interpose their emphatic veto ; but no evidence has yet been adduced calculated to justify so damaging an inference. On the 18th inst., however, a ineetiog_ of London merchants was held at the offices of Messrs Robert Brooks and Co., to take the matter into consideration ; »nd a series of resolutions, protesting

gainst the practice complained of, were ■ Assed, and, bein^ signed by nineteen Urns, were printed and forwarded to the banks in London and in the colonies.