§ Order for Third Reading read.
§ MR. VANCEsaid, he thought some explanation was due on the part of those who, like himself, had opposed the Bill of last Session; but he supported the present measure, inasmuch as it was based upon different principles. As the Bill now stood, many objections to the measure of last Session had been removed. The Bill of last Session proposed to pension off, at their full salary, all the existing Commissioners, but the present Bill utilised them, and allowed them to retire on a pension of two-thirds their present income. The Bill of last Session took away many of the safeguards which the mercantile community had against fraudulent debtors by the manner in which, while assimilating the law of bankruptcy to traders and non-traders, it made the same acts of bankruptcy apply to both, reducing in numbers those which at present applied to traders alone. There was another portion of the Bill of which the mercantile interests highly approved. It was that which provided that all deeds of composition should be registered in 261 the Court of Bankruptcy, and should also be open to the inspection of the creditors. That was a provision which would prevent men getting credit upon false pretences. Another important improvement was, that all trials for misdemeanour arising out of the Act were placed in the hands of the Judge of the courts, which would relieve the creditor from the expense of following the fraudulent trader into a criminal court, where the whole expense of the proceedings would fall upon him. There was, however, one part of the Bill to which a strong objection was still entertained. It was considered that it took away too much of that control now exercised by the official and placed too much power in the hands of the trade assiguee. There was, too, in the Bill a clause which he hoped to see altered in "another place." He alluded to the clause making it an act of bankruptcy in a person to suffer an execution to be levied upon his property. That provision whilst it took away all the rewards of diligence from the man who sought to recover his debt, deprived him at the same time of all the costs to which he was put in bringing the debtor's estate into that condition, that the assets might be equally divided amongst all the creditors. He did not object to this new act of bankruptcy, but he did not think that a man who had gone to the expense of suing another for a debt, and obtained judgment should not only lose that debt, but also the costs of the suit. On the whole, if these alterations were made elsewhere he believed the Bill would give general satisfaction to the mercantile community.
§ Bill read 3o, and passed.