WHITEWASH.

Evening Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2342, 4 October 1870, Page 2

WHITEWASH.

We take the following from the Southern Cross of the 17th inst.; — Shampooing may be agreeable, the Turkish bath may bi luxuriously revivifying, but what can they possibly be compared with the whitewash of the Bankruptcy Court of New Zealand, whose almost recreative power is now daily sending forth, as entirely convalescent, many constitutions which in any other less genial clime would be considered, commercially speaking, hopelessly shattered. If we are to take the remarks contained in the recent charge of the Chief Justice to the Grand Jury in Auckland, touching the insolvency matters, as anything else thaq bitter irony on our commercial classes, it is quite time that the spasmodic attempt? hitherto made at a reconstruction of the law on the subject should merge in one grand and combined effort by all honorable business men to obtain the passing of such measures as would preclude the possibility of any adventurer passing through the Bankruptcy Court with a hop-skip aud-a-jump, and a “ Here wc are again, jolly dogs are we,” to his deluded creditors. There may be some degree of irreverence in speaking lightly of what falls from the lips of the highest legal authority in the land, but when that authority speaks <f those he has released from the payment qf their just debts in terms of commendation, on the sole ground that they had not made themselves legal crimina’s, a smile will force itself at the impotence of a law which admits of the dishonest trader rec-iving the smiles of the Chief Justice, while the unfortunate creditor is kept out in the cold. Take ecu rage, yo men of straw; hesitate at no speculation, however hazardous ; get what credit you can from confiding tradesmen, but never be without the essential friend or the convenient bill of sale, and don’t commit a crime, and you will always carry with you the pleasing satisfaction that when it suits your pm pise you can afford Sir George A nicy an opportunity of telling an Auckland Grand Jury that “ the heart of the commercial community is right.”

The following is an extract from the Chief Justice’s A nicy's charge referred to. Judging hy it, Auckland must be a pretty place to live in:—“l think we may allow some credit to the commercial community also in reference to this matter, for, notwithstanding the great pressure upon (he circumstances of men—notwithstanding the general distress that has prevailed throughout a very large section of the community—notwithstanding the almost unprecedented succession of bankruptcies which have befallen, and which the Supreme Court, in one branch of its jurisdiction, had to deal with, I have not had one single instance before myself, while sitting to adjudicate in that jurisdiction, where there was any imputation cast upon any member of the commercial community who applied to the Court that he had been guilty of such conduct as would bring him within the criminal clauses of the Act, One may say therefore that the heart of the commercial community is plight, when one sees that in such a succession of cases there was not one charge of misconduct coming under the criminal clauses of the Bankruptcy Act.” How unsophisticated of the kind judge, and encouraging to the mercantile community. It is quite refreshing—it is, indeed ; it’s so nice to love people if they will only let you.