The Daily Telegraph. TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1884.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4044, 8 July 1884, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1884.

Our morning contemporary, in its leading article on Saturday made tho following statement concerning Mr Sutton's vote on Mr Barron's amendment to the Bankruptcy Bill as introduced by tho Government: — "The present Bankruptcy Act, which was "passed in the session of. 1883, contains "a very just provision that the wages (up "to three months) of clerks, servants, "artisans, laborers, &c, -working for a " bankrupt at the timo of his adjudication, "should be, next to rent, a first claim on " the bankrupt's estate. This proposal, "considered so just and expedient that only "21 memters of the House could be found " to vote against it, and was inserted at the "instance of Mr Barron, member for Caver- " sham. Mr Sutton was one of tho 21 opponents of ordinary justice who voted " against the proposal, so that if he could "have had his way people employed for " wages would have been treated mostun- '' fairly in the Bankruptcy Act. How he " will attempt to explain that vote away we " cannot even conceive. An ounce of fact "is worth a hundred bushels of platform " protestations, and when Mr Sutton next "addresses a meeting of wage-oarners he "will probably have to justify his belief "that working people should not have a "preferential claim upon a bankrupt es"tate."

It is an old saying, and worthy of remembrance, that " a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." Our contemporary is one that should especially bear it in mind. Had it taken the trouble to find out what the original provision was with rcpect to preferential claima of employes against the estates of bankrupts, it would hardly have written in the style which we have quoted above. It would rather have left the subject alone for it is one in which Mr Sutton took a stand altogether in the interests of tho wageearners. The original Bill had the following clause in respect of preferential debts: — '' All wages or salary of any clerk or servant in the employment of the bankrupt at the date of the order of adjudication, and not exceeding sit months wages or salary, and not exceeding one hundred pounds." Mr Barron's amendment was to insert three months instead of six, and that amendment was carried. Mr Sutton voted with the Government and against Mr Barron's proposal, and so also did Mr Holmes, and Mr De Lautour. It is hardly conceivable that a journal that pretends to be respectable should have so completely misread parliamentary jiroceedings as to turn black into white. We did not intend to have taken any notice of the Herald's mis-representa-tions and clumsy inventions, but it becomes rather a serious matter when the public are wilfully and maliciously deceived with regard to what has taken place in Parliament. Our contemporary says "an ounce of fact is worth a hundred bushels of platform protestations," to which we may add that a grain of truth is worth more than a whole newspaper full of falsehoods.