§ MR. WEIR (Ross and Cromarty)I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the disclosures reported in The 1561 Daily Chronicle of the 10th instant, made in the public examination of a bankrupt of the name of Burgess, who had turned his business, when it was a losing concern and in financial straits, into a limited company, consisting of himself, his father, his mother, his wife, and his friends, and who, under the cover of that fiction, had evaded the operation of the Bills of Sale Acts, by giving unregistered assignments under the name of debentures over his chattel property to the extent of £40,000 for debts amounting to £9,500; and whether he intends to introduce legislation that shall extend the principles of the Bills of Sale Acts to assignments by limited companies?
§ MR. MUNDELLAMy attention has been called to this matter, and I am conferring with the Lord Chancellor with a view to taking measures for the prevention of suck fraudulent practices.