I have the honor to remain,
Your obedient servant,
Henry Clews.
Edward Brandon, Esq., Chairman of the Committee on the Admission of Securities to the N. Y. Stock Exchange:
Dear Sir:—It is currently reported that the State of Georgia is about to apply to your Committee to list a new issue of bonds. In behalf of myself and others who have suffered most seriously by that State’s unwarrantable repudiation of bonds, which have as full a right to an equal standing as representing the credit of the State of Georgia as possessed by the new bonds to be issued, and fully realizing that the cruel fate of the former merely represents what may be that of the latter, I claim the right, as a member of the New York Stock Exchange, as a sufferer to the extent of several millions of dollars by the State of Georgia’s bad faith, to protest against the admission of any new securities hereafter to be issued by that State until her repudiated bonds are recognized and provided for.
Yours very truly,
Henry Clews.
Ex-Governor Bullock’s Democratic successor, soon after he was elected to that position, appointed as Attorney and Agent for the State of Georgia, one of the State’s ablest lawyers, a gentleman distinguished as having been a member of the Confederate Congress, to investigate all the business transactions between Henry Clews & Co. and the State of Georgia. Under his signature as Attorney and Agent for the State, he makes the following statement: “I would say, with a great deal of pleasure, that after a very thorough and complete examination of the books of account, papers and correspondence of Messrs. Clews & Co., so far as they relate to transactions of that house with the State of Georgia during Governor Bullock’s administration, I am satisfied that in all the dealings of that firm with the State of Georgia, they have acted with both fairness and liberality, and I am convinced that in all these matters Mr. Clews did nothing that would not bear the closest scrutiny, and he did nothing, in my opinion, to affect his character for integrity and fair dealing. I make this statement with the more pleasure because I began this examination of accounts of Clews & Co. under impressions very unfavorable to Mr. Clews.”