These debenture stocks, like the loans issued by Governments and Municipal Corporations, may be redeemable at a specified date or after it. The approach of the redemption date naturally affects the market price. If a stock at present quoted at 95 is redeemable ten years hence at 100, the tendency of the price is, of course, to rise to the 100, and one who buys the stock at 95, in calculating what it will yield him, takes into account, of course, not only the annual interest, but the fact that he must receive, as it were, a bonus of £5 when the company buys the stock on the date of redemption. Similarly, if the stock is bought at a higher price than that at which it is redeemable at some future date, the buyer must regard the yield which it gives him as so much less, for when the date arrives he must take for the stock less than he gave for it. Some stocks are irredeemable, which means, of course, that they go on bearing the rate of interest for ever. The holder of the stock may sell it and thus get rid of the arrangement, but the company or corporation is saddled with the debt and the obligation of paying the fixed rate of interest upon it for all time. This may prove inconvenient and unprofitable if the borrower can obtain loans at a lower rate, but the only way to get rid of the burden is to make some arrangement acceptable to the stockholders. Certain of the Government stocks are redeemable at a comparatively early date, Consols themselves being redeemable in 1923, but only at the option of the Government. Although debentures are called fixed charge stocks, partly because their rate of interest is fixed, and partly because it is a charge on the income of the company before any consideration can be entered into as to what profits there are to be divided among the shareholders, the rate of dividend on certain classes of mere shares which rank after the debentures is also fixed. A company may issue 4 per cent. or 5 per cent. preference shares, and their claim upon the profits, as their name implies, is preferential to that of the ordinary shares, which rank after them. They must receive their 4 per cent. or 5 per cent., as the case may be, out of the profits, and the ordinary shareholders have to look for their dividend to any profits that remain. At the same time, whereas debenture holders are entitled to their interest as a right, and may proceed for it legally as for a debt, the shareholders, even preference shareholders, go without their dividend if there are no profits--and there is an end of it.