South Canterbury Times. THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 1880.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2214, 22 April 1880, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 1880.

If--there is one thing to be detested more than another in a commercial community it is the practice of mud-slinging. During the past few months the circumstances of Timaru, in common with the rest of the colony ; have been peculiarly favorable, for the successful prosecution of. tins mean and nasty pastime. It lias afforded, apparently, a deal of agreeable recreation to a good many, and that it should still be, freely indulged in, is perhaps •no groat matter for surprise. But the practice is one that begets illfeeling, leads to no good result, and, because of its excessive meanness, ought to be severely deprecated. To pomwater on a drowned rat, —to jump on the fallen arc proverbially recognised symptoms of cowardice. Yet bow many distinguished models of all that is supposed to be pure and chaste in commercial life, by their daily acts and conversation, perpetrate this execrable.

.meanness

Thcyc is no doubt that the individual who at one time has moved in an elevated social or commercial sphere, but who, through rash speculation, overtrading, or unexpected losses, has fallen from his proud estate and bites the dust, becomes, because of his attitude of humiliation, aconspicious Aunt Sally for every successful idiot to have a sh}' at. But if wo look at what he has been and what he is, should he not be regarded rather as a fit subject for compassion ? The season of depression, I hat still hangs like a dark cloud over the colon}', has brought many a deserving and enterprising colonist from the seventh heaven of financial bliss to ruin’s door. Yet how many self-con-stituted judges in bankruptcy do we find, who look upon their misfortunes as a crime ; how many Pharisees, depending from day to day on the brittle thread that binds them to their bankers, who arc ready to say “we are not as other men ” ; how few Samaritans ready and willing to render timely assistance! Let it not be sup. p'ossd that we are claiming sympathy for fraud. . There is a great deal of tlm latter article going about, and the worst of it is, that it rarely comes to grief. On (be contrary, it: is specially privileged, legalised we should say', and it is almost invariably successful. Onr argument is that misfortune, divested of llagr.int fraud, receives censure too el ten when it is entitled to pity, and when it would bo belter for everyone concerned if compassion of a pratieal kind was extended. In a crisis like the present when employers of labor, enterprising merchants and tradesmen, after .years of diligent 'plodding and contriving, and despite unwearying exertion and mental worry, are tumbling every day, U would be well if a little charity could be exercised, Creditors, we believe, would be quite as well served in the long run, if instead of pursuing their once powerful, but now fallen clients to the death, t!>ey could Be to their faults a little blind, And to their virtues ever kind.

Although t)io foregoing- remarks arc general, they have a spofljpl application in connection with cases that arc qncntly brought before our bankruptcy Courts. They are prompted by the desire displayed by a certain class of creditors to be rapacious and merciless when they mig-ht be expected to slime a little leniency. If we look around this district we can find not a few alarming and lamentable monuments of the severity of the times. Workshops silent as the grave, smokeless dumpies, engines, idle and machinery rusting where twelve or eighteen months ago workmen were earning regular wages, arc sad signs. The proprietors of these ostablisments —men who worked with an energy and determination of purpose that, in the ordinary course of events, might have been expected to command success—have gone to the wall. Some of them may have speculated unwisely, but most of them have suffered from no .sms of their own, but from a pressure •over which they hud UO control. Near

those silent mills, ami empty shops, and vacant warehouses, —monuments of a season of wide-spread ruin,— may be found institutions of a different character, which arc thriving - . The countinghouse of the usurer has been kept busy—doing a roaring trade —fattening on the spoils of a commerce in ruins. Manufacturers, large and small, shipwrecked in compilin', have descended into the rapids, and when they struggled for safety the}* have been taken treacherously by the hand by remorseless wreckers. The non-producers have floated and flourished, while the employers of labor —the men to whom New Zealand owes nearly everything—have in many instances sank ; and the wreckers —the dealers in paper and specie—are the foremo.it now to jump on the fallen, ft is these wreckers that are to he found reviewing with a microscopical eye the faults of the enterprising tradesman who lias succumbed like an insect to their spider-like embraces. It is these cent per cent patterns of high commercial morality who are usually to he encountered applying the golden spur to the sensual administrator, and endeavoring to turn justice of the vicious type into a dangerous engine of oppression. These arc the mud-sliugcrs- the individuals who prey upon commerce, pat monopolies on the back, reap what they never sowed, and wreak a mean vengeance on the genuine settlers of the colony. It is the prosperity of this class that New Zealand lias to fear—a class that is abusing its absurd and illegitimate privileges by tying the hands of the supplicating debtor, casting him into gaol at pleasure, or driving him out of a country which under a better condition of society, his presence and enterprise would have vastly enriched.