Page:(Commercial character) The Joseph Fisher lecture in commerce, delivered at the University of Adelaide (IA commercialcharac00jessrich).pdf/20

16 the individual liability. Why not go a step farther and abolish it? If one thousand men are prepared to risk say £20 each for a purpose, and after a time the success of their operations seems to warrant it, why not issue more shares, and so do away with the liability, which all have assumed, but which only the few may be able to discharge. And then, again, when a crisis comes, the original shareholder may be dead, and the successors in interest may be unbusinesslike persons, who would be sufficiently penalized by losing their principal without being compelled to pay liquidators' calls on their own shares as well as on those of such as make default. A true man's first care is to make provision for his widow and children, always assuming that he is not sufficiently advanced to deride the titles sanctified by nature and hallowed by time of wifehood and motherhood. What better shape can the provision take for the small capitalist than shares in a reputable trading concern, and yet experience has shown us that this very provision too often means ruin for the unfortunate legatees. We know what we are, but we know not what we may be, and most of us, no longer in our first youth, can recall changes most unexpected and most disastrous in the characters and methods of the wisest and most respected.

I have spoken of the possibilities of the expansion of Australia's commerce, and in this connection we must not overlook the fact that in addition to some three million square miles of country in Australia proper, we have the destinies of an immense tropical territory in New Guinea in our hands. A great deal of time and trouble would seem to have been devoted to the task of determining who shall be excluded from this vast domain, but the tide is,