JUDGE WARD, AND THE DEBTORS' AND CREDITORS' ACT, 1875.

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 108, 22 April 1876, Page 3

JUDGE WARD, AND THE DEBTORS' AND CREDITORS' ACT, 1875.

Fuoji the “ North Otago Times” wo learn that liis Honor .Bulge Ward thus delivered himself at a recent sitting in bankruptcy of the District Court : Many of our statutes, like ourselves, arc fearfully and wonderfully made. On the bench, however, we do not presume to criticise the wisdom of the Legislature, but we are bound to point out the results thereof. Under this Act, and the regulations we have been discussing, the position of the debtor is, to say the least, peculiar, if he owe £IUOU, iu debts of £lO and under, the framers of the regulations do not consider him deserving of relief at all. Rut let us take an ordinary case of insolvency, when a debtor can offer his creditors no dividend, or only one too small to be worth looking after. He tiles his state nient of insolvency, and thereupon his whole property vests in the Clerk of the Court, his next step being to call a meeting of his creditors. Now there exists iu most human bosoms, hut especially in the mercantile breast, a curious disinclination to throw good money after bad, or to waste time iu the. unprofitable pursuit of an infinitesimal dividend. The debts will, in all probability, be simply written off as bad by the various creditors, who will then decline all further trouble in the matter. It is plainly entertaining too exalted a view of human nature to suppose that a creditor who finds himself defrauded of his due will attend a series of meetings, at great loss of time to himself, keep minutes, and pass a variety of pleasing resolutions, not with the hope of obtaining a farthing of tin* amount die to him, but purely to enable’ his debtor to get chair of him altogether. In such a ease, when creditors in sufficient number will not attend a single meeting (and I hear that several such eases have occurred recently), what is the position of the debtor / Whatever property he lias, or whatever may come to him, beyond his hare earnings, vests in the Cl rk of the Court, lie is not, however, protected from actions at law, or from their usual consequences. The clerk cannot pay the creditors, even if funds come into his hands, inasmuch as they are not entitled to be paid until they have proved their dotbs. Probably none would prove their debts prior to the first meeting of creditors, in which ease they are directed to prove thorn before a chairman or trustee duly elected. In the case we are supposing, such election would not have taken place, nor would a liquidation resolution have been passed. Under the Act the proceedings can go no further, but do not lapse, and no provision is made for quashing them, or for replacing the debtor in the position he occupied before filing the fatal statement of insolvency. Freed from his property, hut not from his debts, of a certainty “ the last state of that man is worse than the first.” The wisdom of the Legislature has evidently doomed it fitting that a debtor, who has not reserved a portion of his estate sufficiently large to induce his creditors to attend his meetings in hope of a dividend, should go down to Ids grave in a state of liquidation. Until his debts are merged in the great debt of Nature. Years may come and years may go, I’nt he remains for ever an unliquidated man. It may bo a comfort to him in his painful situation to reflect that when he filed his state ment of insolvency—and paid the fees thereon —he unconsciously enrolled himself in the “ noble army of martyrs” to colonial legislation.