About the year 1886 there was a _cause celebre_, the parties being the firm of Jurado & Co. _versus_ the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. The Bank had agreed to make advances on goods to be imported by the firm in exchange for the firm's acceptances. The agreement was subject to six months' notice from the Bank. In due course the Bank had reason to doubt the genuineness of certain documents. Mr. Jurado was imprisoned, but shortly released on bail. He was dismissed from his official post of second chief of Telegraphs, worth P4,000 a year. Goods, as they arrived for his firm, were stored pending litigation, and deteriorated to only a fraction of their original value. His firm was forced by these circumstances into liquidation, and Mr. Jurado sued the Bank for damages. The case was open for several years, during which time the Bank coffers were once sealed by judicial warrant, a sum of cash was actually transported from the Bank premises, and the manager was nominally arrested, but really a prisoner on parole in his house. Several sentences of the Court were given in favour of each party. Years after this they were all quashed on appeal to Madrid. Mr. Jurado went to Spain to fight his case, and in 1891 I accidentally met him and his brother (a lawyer) in the street in Madrid. The brother told me the claim against the Bank then amounted to P935,000, and judgement for that sum would be given within a fortnight. Still, years after that, when I was again in Manila, the case was yet pending, and another onslaught was made on the Bank. The Court called on the manager to deliver up the funds of the Bank, and on his refusal to do so a mechanic was sent there to open the safes, but he laboured in vain for a week. Then a syndicate of Philippine capitalists was formed to fleece the Bank, one of its most energetic members being a native private banker in Manila. Whilst the case was in its first stages I happened to be discussing it at a shop in the _Escolta_ when one of the partners, a Spaniard, asked me if I would like to see with my own eyes the contending lawyers putting their heads together over the matter. "If so," said he, "you have only to go through my shop and up the winding back staircase, from the landing of which you can see them any day you like at one o'clock." I accepted his invitation, and there, indeed, were the rival advocates laughing, gesticulating, and presumably cogitating how they could plunder the litigant who had most money to spend. At one stage of the proceedings the Bank specially retained a Spanish lawyer of great local repute, who went to Madrid to push the case. Later on Mr. Francis, Q.C., was sent over to Manila from Hong-Kong to advise the Bank. The Prime Minister was appealed to and the good offices of our Ambassador in Madrid were solicited. For a long time the Bank was placed in a most awkward legal dilemma. The other side contended that the Bank could