The Globe. MONDAY, MAY 22, 1876.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 600, 22 May 1876, Page 2

The Globe. MONDAY, MAY 22, 1876.

At the quarterly general meeting of tho Chamber of Commerce held on Friday last,-the report of the subcommittee on the Debtors and Creditors Act was read. This report is worthy of serious study by the trading community of the colony. The tendency of all legislation of late years on the subject of insolvency or bankruptcy has been a leaning toward the unfortunate debtor. We say unfortunate as distinct from fraudulent. There has been considerable alteration in most of the provisions of the new and amended statutes providing for his more ready relief from his troubles, and altogether we can discern a tendency to simplyfy trade transactions, and reduce dealing to a matter of simple faith, with the proviso of rendering the debtor who makes use of false pretences to obtain either money or its equivalent value in goods amenable to the Criminal Law. It will be as well to deal with a few of the recommendations of the committee, and see to what extent their suggestions further this tendency, and what advanage would be likely to accrue to the the creditors, as to the expeditious and most satisfactory way of winding up an insolvent's estate. In pointing out some of the principal defects of the present Act, as considered by the subcommittee, we confine ourselves in the present article to noticing clause VII of these suggestions, viz., the " Lapse of " Meeting" : " what is the effect when a quorum of " creditors do not attend, or if attend- " ing, do not agree to a liquidation. "We believe it to be the better " opinion that the debtor remains as " to his property and liabilities, where " he was before the meeting was sum- " moned. He can if he pleases make " another attempt to get a meeting, " but practically he is in the position " of a debtor, who cannot obtain a " release from his debts. "We believe " that such cases have happened, and " are likely to happen in cases where " the debtor has reduced his estate " to nothiug before calling his creditors " together, or has otherwise commer- " cially misconducted himself. "We " have felt the difficulty of contending " that a debtor should be abso- " lutely precluded from obtaining " relief where he has not committed " some legal crime, and in this view " we were disposed to recommend that " he should be authorised to apply to " the Court for an order of liquidation " when he failed to get it from his " creditors. But we cannot but feel " that this power, unless carefully " guarded, would seriously trench upou " a principle, which we hope the " Chamber will regard as sacred, " namely, that a debtor's liquidation is " a matter which first and foremost " concerns his creditors, and that when " they have refused to pass the resolu- •' tion or abstained from meeting, the " Court ought not, except on " some defined ground, to interfere." Upon the careful perusal of the foregoing we cannot but perceive that the preclusion of the debtor from obtaining a release from his liabilities through the lapse of a meeting of his creditors, may be readily brought about by the creditors intentionally being absent from such meeting, and that whist they are not bound by law to attend, they have in their hands a means of dealing out to the debtor unmerited punishment by keeping him in a position of thraldom, from which, in many cases, he could never emerge. Now we are of opinion that all which even-handed justice could possibly require is that provided that the creditors thought fit to absent themselves from a meeting for the relief of a debtor that he should be considered as entitled to his discharge, by an order of the Court, without any further interference on the part of the creditors, who so absented themselves, and that the estate of the debtor should be vested in the Kegistrar of the Court, or other duly appointed officer, for the benefit of his creditors. To preclude a debtor from obtaining relief, and the earliest possible relief, we look upon as a matter wherein the creditors, so taking the law in their own hands, would evince a want of sympathy with misfortune that would be most reprehensible. It would only be fair that any charge of misconduct against the debtor should be brought before the meeting, and then and there investi gated.