Series 4 > Scottish industrial history

156 SCOTTISH INDUSTRIAL HISTORY
to meet the liabilities of the Company. It having been found im¬
possible, within the limited time available for their examination,
to classify or separate these, the Committee instructed their pro¬
fessional Assistants to ascertain the position of the Company by a
particular examination of the Revenue Statement specially remitted
to the Committee for verification, and by a general examination
of so many of the Statements of previous half-years as should be
necessary to trace the origin and progress of the Suspense Accounts,
brought to the knowledge of the Shareholders for the first time in
the Directors’ Supplementary Report of September last, and pre¬
viously concealed under the general entry of‘sums due to the Com¬
pany less sums due by the Company’. The farther remarks of the
Committee on Capital expenditure will therefore be more fitly
made when dealing with the Revenue Accounts.
II. REVENUE
The Revenue Account remitted to the Committee for verification
is the third balance that appears in the Balance Book of the Com¬
pany applicable to the half-year ending 31st July last.
The first balance in the Book brought out a free revenue of
-£268,265 5s. available for dividends. This balance having been
previously examined was, on 5th September, certified as correct
by the Auditors. On 10th September they gave in a Report with
reference to that audit.
The second balance was not audited or certified, and is a general
balance only.
The third balance which forms the subject of remit was pre¬
pared under a special direction from the Board, that it should be
made out ‘strictly relative to the receipts and expenditure for the
half-year’. The audit of it was followed up by a Report from the
Auditors, who, when certifying its correctness, deleted their
signatures to the previously certified balance-sheet.
The Accountants have prepared an Adjusted Revenue Account
for the half-year ending 31st July last, exhibiting, so far as they have
had the means of ascertaining, the charges that, according to
correct practice and the usage of other Railway Companies, should
be placed against Revenue. The result is, that after paying Deben-