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new bankruptc y; code.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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ever the coruin * war may . cost , we must have the honour of paying for it ourselves . Unofficial calculations set down the probable cost at nine or tea millions sterling ; and amongofficial men it is confidently admitted that we shall be very lnckV if we get off with five millions . The Secretary for ^ ar goes ' a step further , and tells us that in his opinion we have got on the wrong road , but that he is afraid to propose retracing our steps at present . He honestly confesses that he ^ sees anything but advantage in certain stipulations of the ireaty of Tien-tsin , the irksome character of which to the Chinese caused , as we all know , the delay in its ratification : nevertheless ISlr . Sidney HEUBEK'ris prepared to back oiir diplomatic blunders oy fived
an expedition in which we hazard the lives of say -an-twenty thousand men , and incur the financial waste of many millions ot money . Nobody can point out any tangible benefit to be derived in any event from the proceeding . A good deal is said about the necessity of vindicating our insulted honour by the capture and demolition of the Taku forts ; and if that were all , we own we should give ourselves little trouble about the matter . But this is a mere preliminary , on which small stress is laid . It cannot be for this that ah army is to be transported four or five thousand miles , with all its huge and cumbrous train of baggage and camp following . -Neither is it conceivable that , for the sake of extorting a mere apology from the Ch inese Government , hazard and cost on a scale so enormous would be incurred . The talk about
an apologv for the collision at the mouth of the Peiho , and about the necessity of demolishing the Taku forts , is mere empty sound signify ino- nothing , A greater and guiltier purpose will be inevitably imputed to those who have planned the expedition in concert with our annexing ally ,. the Emperor of the French . The shifty and colourless Lord Elgin is to be sent out once more with sealed " orders ,, to direct operations in the Yellow Sea ; and if any one can cover over the violent and rapa cious policy of which he is content to be the instrument , with plausible
semblances and fair words , the noble lord will , do it . B-ut . let Lord Elgin understand distinctly that no amount of family connection or Court interest will be * able to hold him harmless :, if , under his authority , the great resources of a great empire should be lavished on an unworthy or abortive scheine . Parliament may no . t ^ insist upon knowing beforehand what his instructions are , but it will assuredly exact a stern account from him ere the year comes round of all that is done under his direction in China . He has himself admitted over and over again that it would be alike impolitic and wrong to attempt to exact from the Chinese Government any conditions of peace that would tend to humiliate its
it in the eyes of its subjects , and thereby to disorganise power . From the day the Mantchou Empire begins to crumble under the shock of European violence , a ruinous conflict of European races for the division of its spoil will infallibly commence ; and once commenced , who shall foretell its ending ? Russia cannot , and France will not , remain passive spectators , while England plays the same reckless game of territorial aggrandisement in the Flowery Kingdom that she has for upwards of a century been playing in Hindostnn . Our net gains ia the latter are certainly not so clear as to beguile us easily into a , repetition of the policy that has saddled us with the care of Southern Asia , and laden us with . the cost of its forcible acquisition . '
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HEARTILY as the mercantile classes have reprobated the existence * of the Bankruptcy law , it was never more severely and raor-o justly condemned than by the Attounky-General . No country in Europe , he said , barl so bad a law . It had been denounced over and over again . It had been radically changed j it had been continually altered nnd amended ; but it wns still more complained of than ever , and the last days of the law were worse than the first . To collect debts the cost is about
five per cent . ; using the instrumentality of the Court of Bankruptcy the cost is thirty-three per cent . Bankruptcy business is , in consequence , done out of pouvt j and this expensive apparatus is nearly as useless as it is costly . In 1858 the number of adjudications in Bankruptcy was , according to the Attokney-General , six hundred and sixty , while the number of compositions and arrangements , tantamount to withdrawing bankruptcy cases from Bankruptcy courts , was computed to be eight thousand . The stringent provisions of the Bankruptcy law , founded on inhumanity rather than justice , and the cost of flic process , induce the creditor to forego its supposed advantages , and save as much of his property as he enn without having recourse to it . Can anything bo more useless than nn exponsive court , which keejpa away suitors P It is a wookcry of justice . How to remedy the accumulated evil has been the diligent study
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of the Attorney-General , and he declares that his greatest difficulty arises from , previous l « egislation . It stands in the way of improvement . Such are the ascertained results of the legislative labour which at the beginning of every session we hopefully require shall be renewed and extended . V The Attorney-General proposes a great alteration in the law of Bankruptcy , and in the Court to administer it ; will , he be more successful than his distinguished predecessors ? When Lord Brougham , in 183 ?/ , made a sweeping alteration , reducing thirty commissioners to five , appointing official . assignees , &c .,. the brightest hopes were entertained of his success . Soon , however ,
numerous evils sprang out of his measures ; new laws , which excited new hopes ^ were passed to rectify them , and the result is an accumulation of bad laws . The charmer who gilds our lives seems to have no natural place in legislation , and only leads us to believe in its promises to deceive and betray . The hope now expressed , therefore , by all the mercantile authorities who have spoken on the subject / that the Attorney-General has hit the rig ht nail on the head , is probably unfounded . Some ten or twenty years hence some other Attorney-General will do for him what he is doing for Lord Brougham , and sweep away with contempt the legislation with which he is now encumbering the ground .
Following the course which lias , at length .-. bogged us , the ATTORNEY-GiiNTEKAL proposes to extinguish the live Commissioners , and appoint one Bankruptcy Court , to be presided over by one Judge ; The five Commissioners / are occupied by judicial business only fifteen hours a week—three hours a day each for five days . " " They give contradictory decisions , award or withhold certificates capriciously , are - amenable to ho superior authority , and rather impede than . promote'the ' administration of justice . * Subject to the one condition , that they may be called on . to assist in carrying out the Act ,. they ; - . are to have their full salaries for life . Even this condition they may eseape > from by accepting two-thirds of their present income . The administrative portion of the bankruptcy business , as contradistinguished
from the judicial , will be confided to the Registrars of the Courts , to the official and . creditors- ' assignees . The former are to take charge of- the bankrupt ' s estate , in the first instance , and are afterwards to hand , it over to the creditors' assignee . They arc , however , to audit the accounts of the latter , and it is hoped that both may be kept vigilant and honest by watching each other . . The messengers , too , . who ' receive from £ 1200 to £ 1700 a year each , and employ deputies at 3 s . 6 d . per day to perform , their duties , are to be swept a way .. The Court is . to be simplified , and the one Judge who is to preside over it , and have the entire administration of the P . ankrupt laws , is to be placed on a par with the Judges of the Courts of Equity and Common Law . He is to have £ 5 000 a year . ' To 'him will be made all appeals from
district courts . He will sit and'decide all cases of contention in public , lie will transact administrative business at Chambers , and will be the supreme Judge for Bankruptcy as the Lord Chancellor is for Equity . His tribunal will be limited to the one species of law , and in that he may come to be very expert . The seat of this general Bankruptcy Court is to be at Basinshall Street but there is also to be a London district Court of Bankruptcy , presided over by another and le . sser judge , and holding its ' sittings in Portugn ' l Street . Middlesex , Herts , Kent , Surrey , Sussex , Hampshire , and Kssex are embraced by . this
London district . There are to be seven other districts , each having a court with one Judge . Birmingham , Bristol , Exeter , Leeds , Liverpool ; Manohester , and Newqastle-on-Tyne . The Commissioners who are now in these districts are to be continued ; but a power is given to Her Majesty i . n council to niter the districts , and it is hoped that ultimately the county courts , which arc immediately to have jurisdiction , in bankruptcy , " may absorb the whole of the district business . We have had in modern times a great number of new courts established , and it would be highly satisfactory to reduco them without departing from the great principle of currying justice to every man ' s door .
Besides providing for the formation of respectable courts to administerthe law bothin the metropolis and in the county districts , the ; Attornky-GisntoRal alters very considerably the law to be administered . He abolishes the distinction between trader and nonrtrader , and subjects all insolvents alike to the provisions of tlw Bankruptcy Code . This carrios with it a necessity for defining nnd altering the stringent regulations for determining what is an act of bankruptcy , ft would never do , as Sir b itzhoy Kelly pointed out ,. to huvo simple debtors declared insolvent for acts " which make traders bnnkrupta . Accordingly the acts winch constitute bankruptcy nro defined , and debtors have in many cases optionnl courts left open to thorn . To form a correct opinion of all the nltorntions the new measure makes in the JianKruptcy code would require a considerable study , i- lio fiUl , ox-
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March 24 1860 . 1 The headw and Saturday Analyst , 273
New Bankruptc Y; Code.
NEW BANKRUPTCY CODE .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), March 24, 1860, page 273, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2339/page/5/
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