A MONEY-LENDER'S LURE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 22 December 1913, Page 4

A MONEY-LENDER'S LURE.

At |irst sigKt^ it is indeed paradoxical that while London, as a great financial' centre, .l is at present distinctly disinclined to look with : javor :6n ' wellknown find solvent; countries desirous

fof 'tHJiro^tiig, yet professional moneylenders there, and elsawtiere throughout the Three Kingdoms actually, unsolicited, offer loans to per*-.: sons, and encourage business by sending them considerable sums of unaskedmoney. This is done to such an extent that Lord Newton recently introduced a Bill in the House of Lords to suppress the practice.' vln doing this he gave facts, and described cir-, cumstances, to show that-the practice I leads to many evils —to abnormal gains on the part of. the lender, and to victimisation of the borrowers, Whose simplicity and needs were frequently played upon in ways which ended in their ruin. On Thursday, however; we published a London cable message, which shows that even money-lenders ,of the kind referred to have the protection of the law in the matter of the recovery, of money -gratuitously j sent out by them. The message states that a clergyman in the Bermondsey district has been ordered to repay £50 to a money-lender, the amount of an unsolicited loan, with costs. The facts are such that people even in this part of the world should be interested in them. . In July this year, a certain firm of money-lenders sent, without any invitation, £50 in Bank of England notes to the Rev. Herbert Williams, rector of Horseleydawn, Bermondsey. Mr "Williams made the fact public in a London newspaper as a warning to others, but he kept the notes, and refused all subsequent requests or demands from the firm for the return of the money. In acting thus, he had a public object in view, as he was aware that the practice had been the means of leading necessitous clergymen into trouble. Anywayj in the end, he handed the notes to an editor, who placed them in the safe keeping of an impartial person. Further, in the public interest, and to settle the law on the subject, which was regarded as doubtful, the editor's paper invited the money-lending firm to tak« any legal steps that were open to it, and declared that it would retain the notes until —if ever —the courts ordered otherwise. As the cable tells us,, the courts have now ordered otherwise, probably on the ground that, in sending its money out, the firm did not part with its property in the notes, and that no one had- a right to retain them or use them except under agreement with the owners. The principle of law in the matter is no doubt that which makes goods sent out by a draper on approval, still his property, and not 'retainable by the person to whom they are sent except under ordinary conditions as to responsibility for their payment or delivery on demand. We should say, however, that with regard to unsolicited loans, this does not extenuate the preliminary transaction as a temptation to prospective clients, and the decision will probably help Lord Newtown in his crusade against the practice as one that is opposed to .financial morality and the public intei'est.