THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 1878.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2868, 25 April 1878, Page 2

THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 1878.

Confiding creditors in several parts of the Colony have lately awakened to the fact that it would be better for their finances, and conduce to a higher tone of commercial morality, if they were a little ■more searching.ia their enquiries into the affairs of bankrupts. For many years the process known as "going through the Court" has been rendered so easj and so pleasant that it really seemed that .those who had once experienced the ordeal rather liked it, and repeated the operation as soon as they could do so with some show of decency. This abuse of the Bankruptcy Acts and the forms of the Court is working its own cure now. There was a time when a man in business (or out of business for that matter) owing money and finding himself in difficulties would cast about for a way of escape. The easiest mode that presented itself was to file an affidavit that he was unable to meet his engagements with his creditors. If he possessed sufficient funds to pay the law fees and fees to a Trustee in Bankruptcy, and bad not left any evidence in his books of grossly unfair trading, he was pretty sure to "go through " all right.' A fresh start on a larger scale was an easy matter, and there are some men in business now whose repeated appearances in the Bankruptcy Court seem to have been the making of them: they have after each operation of whitewashing commenced business on a larger scale. There is a great deal of this going on yet.irom the fact that it is difficult to prove fraudulent bankruptcy, the Act is very easy in its ! provisions, and creditors are in nine cases out of ten disposed to be lenient. Judges, however, are beginning to look into these matters. Only the other day an insolvent who presented himself before Judge Gillies for his final discharge was reminded that that was his second appearance in Court within two years, and he had better be careful, as if he came again his certificate might be suspended. There was no opposition in the case, and wo regard the learned Judge's remarks as an indication that he disapproves of the facilities afforded to insolvents to rid themselves of their liabilities by going through the Court, and that if creditors are ever so indulgent the Judges have a duty to perform which cannot bo entirely abrogated. The prosecutions lately instituted in Auckland seem to have instigated creditors in other portions of the Colony to look more carefully into the affairs of debtors, and it is to be hoped that this extra vigilance will have the effect of deterring unprincipled men in business from being so eager to shelter themselves from their creditors under the provisions of the Bankruptcy or Debtors and Creditors Act. We recently noticed in a southern paper that proceedings had been instituted against two individuals under the Fraudulent Debtors Act, whose affairs, as reported on by the trustee, disclosed a scandalous state of things. One had been in business but a few months and his affairs showed a deficiency of nearly £200, the debtor seeking relief having to admit that just previously he had lost £35 on a racecourse. In another case two men who had been in businesss less than a year, and commenced with a joint capital of about £50, had incurred debts to the amount of nearly a thousand pounds, with a certain deficiency of nearly i £400 even if the assets realised the utmost estimate. In each of these cases a rule nisi was granted to show cause why criminal proceedings should not be instituted. These are not isolated cases, but they are sufficient to show that creditors are becoming alive to the fact that they should look more closely into the affairs of insolvents, and discriminate in their proceedings between the honest but unfortunate debtor, and the extravagant, unprincipled trader who is ever ready to incur liabilities and retire them by an act of insolvency.