I support my hon. Friend the Member for Flint (Mr. Birch). He said the object of the Clause was to try to ensure that reasonable assets and nominal capital do as far as possible equate one with the other. That is the situa- tion which is represented by one of the major pieces of legislation we are passing through the House this session—the Companies Bill. The most stringent provisions are being laid down to ensure that every balance sheet gives a true and fair picture of assets of the company. This Clause is designed to ensure that what we are doing under the Companies Bill so far as bonus shares are concerned is translated into fact. My hon. Friend the Member for Flint gave examples of companies whose assets have been written down, but he has not mentioned the most important one, which is the case of mining companies. We have the headquarters of most of the large mining companies of the world in this country; with the exception of a few in U.S.A. These companies are for the most part dependent on what we may call genuine speculation. Capital is produced as they may or may not succeed in the favourable exploitation of the mining sites selected.

It often comes to the point that the people running a mine have to decide whether their capital shall be increased or not, whether they will risk any further money, whether they will write down the capital they have in order to meet future prospects. There is no branch of industry which has brought more prosperity in the way of dividends from abroad, or which has done so much to help our progress, as the mining industry. I think it will be generally agreed that of all those things on which we have relied to balance our adverse trade, nothing has contributed so much as the mining industry.

In this Bill we are going to place a burden upon these big companies—a burden which will force their headquarters from this country. Let it be remembered that they can equally well operate from other parts of the globe. Unless we accept some such proposal as this to enable the company to get back what it has spent and to enable it to readjust its balance sheet, it is indeed a gloomy prospect. It is a gloomy prospect in hoping that we shall keep in this country this large source of invisible revenue. One could speak of the publishing trade. One has to risk the capital before one can hope to get anything back. In newspaper production, in which the whole of the capital is entirely spent on the development of the proposition, one has to hope that at the end one will see a profit and that the undertaking will be a paying proposition. In a weekly or monthly magazine one has to take the capital and write it down in the hope that it will come back. The faith of the proprietors is justified very often, but as this Bill stands who can have that faith? If one has faith in one's enterprise and writes down one's capital, one has to pay in respect of real assets and nominal assets. I have mentioned two trades and they show the evils of this tax. I want to make it clear that it is no intention of ours to say that this Clause meets all the evils, but we hope it will remedy one of the major evils. We are very largely dependent on these industries which redound to the credit of our country, and we should give them faith and hope for the future.