The Dominion THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 1929. BREACHES OF TRUST

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 262, 1 August 1929, Page 8

The Dominion THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 1929. BREACHES OF TRUST

Breaches of trust, as Mr. Justice MacGregor observed when sentencing a prisoner at the Supreme Court in Wellington yesterday, are becoming far too common. This is very true. We live in an extravagant age, and some of our standards of conduct are not edifying. Many people, far too many, if the truth were known; live up to the limits of their incomes. Some habitually exceed the limits of prudence, hoping, like Mr. Micawber, that something will turn up to make everything right.

Somewhere in the pages of classical literature there is a saying to the effect that competitive ostentation is the ruination of society. It is certainly the ruination of many of its members. Beyond a certain point emulation ceases to be a virtue and becomes a vice. When expressed in terms of extravagant living there is usually an unpleasant day of reckoning of one kind or another. In a great many cases which have come before the courts, the persons accused of breaches of trust are not really criminals. They may even be more foolish and weak than actually dishonest. They fail ,to realise that modern accountancy is heavily loaded against them. As the result of long years of experience, present-day banking and commercial practice has evolved a system of accountancy under which detection sooner or later overtakes the individual who attempts to juggle with it. If supervision, checking, and, auditing are efficient, detection should be prompt. If they are not, the man who makes one slip is liable to make another, and another, until he is finally caught. That is where he is foolish. He ought to know that ultimate detection and humiliation are certain, even if he may be fortunate enough to escape prosecution and gaol. There is another aspect of the question. While accountancy has been reaching out in various ways for rogue-proof methods, the community itself has .developed a tendency to treat peculations with a degree of indulgence which has largely off-set the moral effect of its precautionary measures. The offenders who take the risks in the hope that they may be given another chance if discovered, that at the worst they will not be prosecuted but merely dismissed, are undoubtedly more numerous than those who. are bold enough to take both the risks and the consequences, and commit their offences in that spirit. Many cases of breaches of trust never reach the courts at all. That is neither good for the morale of the employer nor the employee. The disciplinary slackness of the one produces moral slackness in the other.

What really seems to be required is a general hardening up of our social and business discipline, and on both sides. Traders complain that it is very difficult nowadays to get their money in. One reason for that is the tendency of some people to pay for their luxuries by keeping their tradesmen waiting. They do so largely because they have found the trades people willing to wait. If the waiting process were sharply curtailed such customers would be compelled to meet their obligations, and incidentally, live within their means.

It is from this general spirit of laxity that many foolish people no doubt drift into financial difficulties, and a few succumb to temptation. The moral strength of the individual in many cases must be sustained and invigorated by the discipline of his community. If breaches of trust are becoming too common, the community has the remedy in its own hands.