SMALL DEBT SUMMONSES.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7696, 19 March 1887, Page 2

SMALL DEBT SUMMONSES.

A TELEGRAM from Wellington announces that it is the intention of the Government to introduce a lull next session abolishing the right of recovery of debts nmler £20 in the Resident Magistrates' Courts. The bill will not pass— that is a very safe prophesy. But it will evoke discussion, and show to what a large and injurious extent the credit system prevails, as exhibited by the records of the Resident Magistrates' Courts. There were, it is stated, over 20,000 summonses issued last year for amounts under £20. This shows that tradesmen generally must give abnormal and absurd facilities to all sorts of people to run up bills, and we are not at all sure that the reformatory measure suggested by the Colonial Secretary would not have a very salulory effect on the whole if it were put in practice. We heartily endorse it in principle, but in practice it would undoubtedly result in considerable hardship. Its effect would be to stop all credit to the poorer classes, and yet it- is to those classes that a little credit now andthen is most necessary. The husband outof work—sickness in the family— or other causes may leave many a hard-working man without a pound in his pocket," and if credit were stopped his household goods, gathered together bit by bit, would have to go to the auction-room, or he would have to accept pauper relief. It may be urged that such men could always obtain credit. It might be so in some cases, where a man had resided many years in one place and bore a good character for sobriety and honesty, but the bulk of our population is always more or less on the move, and those who are known to the tradesmen in a town are comparatively few. Undoubtedly many would feel keenly the abolition' of a little temporary credit, yet tradesmen would be compelled to refuse it, unless they were prepared to become the prey of unprincipled rogues who would he only too glad to repudiate their debts behind the shelter of the law. While, therefore, we are inclined to agree .with much that will be said in favor of the bill, in practice we would take a step rather in the ' opposite direction. We would make the recovery of small debts so cheap, easy, and expeditious that tradesmen would decline to give undue credit, Iml instead wonld put the law in motion against dilatory debtors. _ At present a summons at the Resident Magistrate's Court involves so much trouble, time, and expense, that it is adopted only as a last resource, and in the meantime careless oi- unprincipled people get over head and ears in debt at every shop where they can obtain credit. But if the process of law were simplified it wonld be more used, and such persons would find themselves "pulled-up" very early in their reckless career.