The Lyttelton Times. FRIDAY, MARCS 18, 1887.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 8121, 18 March 1887, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. FRIDAY, MARCS 18, 1887.

We quite agree with Mr Peter Cunningham that anyone attending the Jubilee meeting on Wednesday night must have felt disgraced at the exhibition of personal animus given ac the outset, and at the vein of political feeling which continued to run through the proceedings. The blame for the wasted time, and the undignified figure cut by the meeting is clearly to be chiefly laid on Messrs Louisson and Hulbert for the endeavour to make Mr Justice Johnston’s rather unlucky suggestion about a permanent Chairman into a weapon wherewith to take a snapshot at their enemy the Mayor. Considering the circumstances under which the meeting came together the act was about as smallminded a thing as any two men accustomed to public business could have been guilty of. If the citizens of this town or the Colonists of this Province cannot put their shoulder to the wheel for so impersonal and patriotic an object as their Queen’s Jubilee it is a pity. We do not want Municipal jealousies dragged into such a matter as this. It is unfortunate that Mr Hulbert, after his first excellent suggestion of a way to mark the Jubilee, should so entirely have lost sight of the spirit of kindness and charity of which that suggestion was so full. Mistake number two was made by the section of the meeting which, led by Mr H. K. Webb, came forward to put Sir John Hall at the head of the whole Jubilee celebration. Had this section stayed to think it must —at any rate it ought—to have been clear to its members that Sir John’s appointment must be distasteful" to a large body of Canterbury people. An active party politician in the past, understood to be about to re enter the lists as the head of the Opposition, is about the last man to be chosen as the figure-head of a movement which, in its essence, is entirely outside the range of politics altogether. We know quite enough of politics and of the present Opposition to. believe that if Sir John had been appointed permanent Chairman on Wednesday night, there would have been attempts in many parts of New Zealand to make political capital out of the selection. Sir John is the man to whom Opposition wire-pullers look to bring back the lost sheep of Canterbury into the Opposition fold. The significance of selecting him to represent this Province on a great public occasion would therefore be easily capable of distortion to suit party ends. Wo believe that it would so have been distorted. The meeting, however, though taken by surprise, made a strenuous, if confused, resistance to Mr Webb’s motion. We think they were right in postponing the question of electing a permanent Chairman. The first thing needful is to elect workers ; figure-heads can wait. The movement wants an inner Committee of a manageable size, it wants a programme and a division of labour. When the time comes to choose a permanent Chairman, let him be chosen for any reasons rather than political leanings or schemings. Personal character and official position are usually the two qualities most takeu into account in such matters. If it were possible to choose someone quite unconnected with active politics it would be well. At any rate his qualifications should be distinctly non-political.

There are many who think that Bankruptcy Acta are made to he laughed at. That depends upon how they are administered. The New Zealand Act of 1883 is not only a well-drawn but a stringent statute. Yet it seems quite inoperative in Canterbury to' check fraud and reckless trading. We are driven to think that are far too leniently treated in the Christchurch Bankruptcy Court. For a long time it has been common talk that a debtor here has only to apply for his discharge and get it. That is the popular feeling grounded upon the remarkable success with which shaky insolvents make such applications. There is of course such a thing as a proper spirit of mercy to the unfortunate, and there is such a thing as carrying such mercy to extremes. As long as is merely confined to a general straining after leniency, it is difficult

to criticise it in detail. But the Bankruptcy Court here appears lately to have adopted a doctrine quite at variance both with recent English decisions and the spirit of the Act in force in this Colony. This doctrine is that a debtor is entitled to his discharge unless the creditors appear to oppose it. Now so far is this from being the view of the matter taken in England, that a judge there has refused to grant a debtor’s discharge even where his creditors were consenting parties, on the ground that the debtor’s conduct had been utterly improvident and reckless. The Court here appears to consider that the Official Assignee’s opposition to a discharge is a sort of formal matter of course, and no ground, in the absence of creditors’ opposition, for suspending a certificate. Bat the. 157th section of the Act of 1883 expressly empowers the Court, on the Assignee’s representation, to refuse or suspend an order of discharge, or make it subject to conditions. Gross negligence in the conduct of business is stated as a ground for exercising this power. As to what is gross negligence, there may often be a difference of opinion. Where, however, a firm starting in an ordinary trading business with some capital loses in less than a year all its own money and nearly J3IOOO of its creditors’, and ends by paying the latter something less than a shilling in the pound, we should have thought the case clear. The Court here did not, however, seem to think so the other day, and seemed to attach much weight to the absence of opposition by creditors. As creditors are certain, in most instances, to refuse to waste time and , money in punishing debtors, we must hope that more stress may be laid in future on the recommendations of the Official Assignee even when unsupported.