ABSTRACT
So spake Mr. Denison in his characteristic downright fashion to the Great Northern shareholders at their twentieth half-yearly meeting on 23 August, 1856. He spoke with perfect sincerity, and the greater part of what he said wTas strictly true ; nevertheless, the utterance of it could not have been more unfortunately timed. Three months after this unqualified expression of their chairman's confidence in the Great Northern staff, the whole country was startled, and the shareholders
thrown into consternation, by the announcement that frauds of the most wholesale character had been perpetrated upon the property of the Company, that by manipulation of the accounts of the shareregistration department a sum exceeding ^200,000 had been stolen, and that the head of the department, Mr. Leopold Redpath, had disappeared.
