The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, AND Saturday Morning. Thursday, July 12, 1888. JUDGMENT SUMMONSES.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 168, 12 July 1888, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE. Published EVERY TUESDAY, THURSDAY, AND Saturday Morning.

Thursday, July 12, 1888. JUDGMENT SUMMONSES.

Be just and fear not; ]>t nil the endrf thou aim’st at be thy country's, Thy God’s, and truth’s.

It would be interesting to learn in how many cases in our local Court commitals under the imprisonment for Debt Abolition Act are successful in extracting from debtors the amounts which the other processes of the Court are powerless to compel payment of. Of course the main object of the creditor is to obtain payment of his debt and he wil resort to any method which is likely to help him. The laxity of magistrates in granting orders on judgment summonses has no doubt caused hardship in many individual cases, but in general, the provisions of the Act for

enforcing payment by dishonest debtors who can but who will not pay are no too vigorous. The question whether magistrates use the discretion placed in them by the Act with necessary severity in many cases may be doubted. The utmost imprisonment allowed by the Act is three months, and we believe; in our R.M. Court at least, the rule is to allow one day for every pound of the claim. In large amounts of course this works its own remedy, but in small amounts dishonest debtors have a strong incentive to fraud by allowing themselves to be sent to prison for a short period. This relieves them from further bother by their creditors, and as it has been ruled by our magistrate that no second order for the same money can been made, all the debtor has to do is to watch that he gets no property that can be seized under an execution. We remember one case in point. D was a claim for £4. The defendan 1 swore he had £5 in cash in his pocket. An order was made for four days’ imprisonment. The same evening the debtor gave a party to his friends, and next morning he was sent to prison. The debtor in this case did not plead poverty, but he was simply stubborn. It is. quite possible that if the longer period of imprisonment had been given the debtot would have paid the money. Our attention has been called to this matter by some remarks made by Lord Bramwell in a recent case, which magistrates and justices would do wel] to note. Lord Bramwell said : “ There is one remark I should like to make about imprisoning under the Debtors Act. A learned County Court Judge once told me that at first he used to make orders for committal for a short time, and he found that the people wen 1 to prison. He then lengthened the imprisonment, and found that fewer people went to prison, and that the longer the period for which he committed the people to prison for not pay ing, the shorter was the total amount Of imprisonment suffered by debtors, because when they were committed for the whole six weeks (the limit in England) they moved heaven and earth among their friends to get the funds and pay; whereas if the term was a short one they underwent the imprisonment.” That there is some truth in this we can testify, because we have known of persons going to prison for a small amount, and not long after finding a much larger amount in order to save long imprisonment. Of course magistrates would have to exercise their discretion more in making orders, but once it is certain that a man can pay, then he cannot complain if he is made to do so. The result would be fewer judgment summonses, fewer committals, and a consequent saving both to creditors and to the country.