The Southland Times. FRIDAY, JULY 2, 1875.

Southland Times, Issue 2144, 2 July 1875, Page 2

The Southland Times. FRIDAY, JULY 2, 1875.

« — _— — . We took occasion in a recent article on the prospects of the forthcoming session, to express a hope that, under any circumstances, Ministers would fulfil a loDg standing engagement by introducing a Bill to amend our present bankruptcy procedure. We are glad, therefore, to notice in our Wellington telegrams an intimation that a Bankruptcy Bill will form part of the Government programme for next session, and that its preparation has been entrusted to Mr Bowen. Although resident magistrates do not actually administer bankruptcy law,

they are constantly called upon to decide matters incidentally involving the consideration of its provisions, and none hare had better opportunities of noting the extent to which our present ay stem has been abused, converted as it has bsen into a b arbor of refuge, from which reckless and unscrupulous speculators can defy their victims with security. Besides his lony experience as a magistrate, Mr Bowen will have the advantage of studying his predecessor's Bill — a Bill which, if we remember rightly, figured in the " massacre of the innocents" in a previous session, and was the subject of some not altogether complimentary strictures, forwarded, in response to the Government's invitation, by Chambers of Commerce, and other critics. Under these conditions then, we may hope that Mr Bowen will do credit to the intelligence which placed him, as it were, per saltum, in the Cabinet, and justify the confidence of the electors who endorsed the Premier's choice of an untried politician for so responsible an office as Minister of Justice, by the production of. that commercial desideratum, a satisfactory Bankruptcy Bill. That he will satisfy everybody we do not venture to hope. While most people are agreed on the leading principles on which such a measure should be framed, there are very few who are absolutely at one as to the form in which these principles should be embodied. A perfect measure would be one which should permit, and, indeed, encourage a business man at the earliest moment in which he might find himself in difficulties, to place his estate at the disposal of his creditors ; which would afford the most complete facilities for the apeedy and cheap realization and administration, by the creditors or the Court, of insolvent estates ; and which should provide the most stringent penalties for any approach to fraudulent or reckless transactions. It would be impossible within the limits of an article to point out in what respects our present system falls short of this ideal. The provisions for realizing and administering estates, while unnecessarily cumbrous and expensive, are sound enough in principle, and, with some modification in the details, might be retained in any future scheme. It is in the provisions for the detection and punishment of dishonesty, and of reck'essness amounting to dishonesty, that the defects of the existing Act are moet glaring. The encouragement which has been, and h, given to fraudulent and heedless trading by the knowledge of the ease and safety with which immunity can be procured by the simple process of " whitewashing," is notorious fco every business man. The sarcastic comments of Judge Ward — who has certainly done his utmost to relieve our courts of the reproach of a lax administration of such means of punishment as they possess — on this point will be remembered. The penalty, almost the only one ever inflicted, of a longer or shorter suspension of a certificate, is in most cases a mere farce. It may, in a few instances, prevent a bankrupt from immediately recommencing business, but in the great majority of cases he simply goes about his ordinary work, and his certificate is duly issued in three, six, or twelve months, without further enquiry. It is true that certain special acts of misconduct are declared to be misdemeanors, and, on conviction, the offender may be imprisoned. But besides the difficulty of proof of specific acts, there may be great impropriety of conduct on the part of a bankrupt which does not come within the technical words of the statute, and these are at present really unpunished. A great defect of the existing Act is that it practically throws on the creditors themselves the duty and expense of opposing a discharge and obtaining even the slight amount of punishment ordinarily inflicted. Now creditors are men, and are naturally averse to adding to an existing loss, and, as it is said, " throwing good money after bad," and consequently it is only when a specially impudent case has excited their indignation that they can be induced to organise an opposition. It should, we submit, be the duty of the Court to direct that proceedings should be taken at the public expense against a bankrupt in every case in which the Trustee's report discloses a prima facie case for opposition — and the powers of the Court should be greatly enlarged in the direction of allowing summary conviction and punishment whenever it is satisfied that such has been deserved by the conduct of the insolvent. We do not feel ourselves called on to suggest the machinery by which this result should be arrived at, but there ought to exist no difficulty in framing clauses sufficiently stringent. We believe that these points must have been prominently forced on Mr Bowen's notice in the course of his own experience, and we are content to leave the measure in his hands, in the hope that neither the exigencies of party nor the crotchets of individual members will be allowed to interfere with the progress of a measure which is so imperatively demanded by every section of the community.