The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1858-05-04 00:00:00

BLANDFORD.
FAILURE OF THE OLD BANK.

The condemned criminal is taken to the scaffold,
and the moralist on perusing the sickening detail of
the execution, consoles himself with the thought
that vice needs the warning. The moralist may be
right sod Dickens wrong, and the villains who may
be congregated round tho scaffold may go away and
be deterred from acting out some dark deed of crime
by the remembrance of the awe-inspiring spectacle
they have witnessed. But there are other crimes
characterised by even a wider range of social wrong
and influence than those called 'capital," such MI
are committed by men of high commercial standing
—we mean the abuses of legitimate trade enterprise,
and even worse, which grumbling society is told by
the spuriously charitable when the breakup oomes,
must be regarded as the consequences of dispositional
failings, or the absence of business aptitude in those
who conducted such transactions. It is true, the
moralist in these C 11865 has no tale of horrors to rouse
his mind to the consideration of the moral conse-
quences flowing from them, but, whether the
moralist considers the consequences or not, whether
he looks upon such a state of things merely as the
blotting out of monetary magnates from the sphere
of social attraction, or cesards it through the medium
of the more enlightened and honest convictions of
his mind, the social and commercial evils resulting
from such frequent and wanton repudiations of
honest principles must ultimately prove disastrously
ruinous to public confidence and likewise public
credit. It is no uncommon thing to hear those who
occupy a high social position, and who own to moral
pretensions, speak in palliative terms of those per.
sons who have been guilty of exposed commercial
fraud, and still more to know that they seek by
their influence to shield them from the consequences
of their guilt. This perverted sense of justice is not
confined to the private social circle, it has its sup-
porters in the high judicial personage and Par-
liamentary advocate, who have sought to cover up
by fallacious arguments and friendly eulogy the com-
mercial delinquencies of men whose acts are said to
have brought them within the scope of the criminal
law. Such speaking and acting especially by those
having official power and social influence, must dete-
riorate the commercial honesty of a commercial com-
munity, and though the moral character of English
society cannot be again subversed by the pernicious
example of Court vices, yet it may be found that the
lessons of dishonesty lately read to the commercial
public in this country, palliated as they have been
and are by the morbid minds of many leading men
amongst us, will develop a fearful laxity of that
commercial integrity which has ever been the boast
of this country.
It is said that an Englishman's feelings are soonest
moved through his pocket. In a great many cases
this is no doubt true; certainly not less so with the
poor or middle-class man than with his superior in
wealth. Upon which of these classes in this town
and neighbourhood will the evils arising from the
bank failure most heavily fall? It is impossible for
the rich man wholly to escape inconvenient conse-
quences resulting from his pecuniary toes; but the
tradesman and poor man must be the greatest suffer-
ers ; and who can gauge the amount of mental suffer-
ing and domestic wretchedness entailed on those two
classes owing to the pecuniary looses they have
sustained. The tradesman, it may be, must narrow
his already narrowed expenditure to meet direct loas
or lessened trade demand—it may be both- whilst
the poor man must save again, if life', narrow limits
will allow lum to do so, or it may be, nurse in some
.nook or oorner of village seclusion his grief or culti.

vale his resentment. Let the poor man be told by
his better educated neighbour skit those who have
'wasted his substance' have manifested but aty
in their conduct of commercial offences stamped
society as venial; and still more, that the laws or
his country award no penalty of punishment for such
doings, but absolutely cancel the tnvial guilt by a
bankruptcy certificate. Will such information give,
a poor man, whose experience of the administration
of tbe laws of his country is confined to a knowledge
of the punishment inflicted for "petty larceny,..
cause bins to feel a greater respect for those laws, or
be more inclined by such a standard of justice, to
practise more strictly the principle of justice him,
self? Apply a like process of reasoning to th,
tradesman or middle-class man, and though he nay
be better fitted by education satisfactorily to amount
to his own mind for the anomalies of justice which
stagger the mind of his poorer brother, yet he will
compare with no gratified feelings the punishment
which society, his customers, and the PIM/ mete out
to him, for even the doubtful trivialities of trade
wrong, with that punishment awarded to those whose
1 unequivocal wrong doings have defied even convert.
tional morality end outraged recognized trade
, honesty. It will be well if the man of businese
compares such an unequal dealing act of justice enly
to pain his own mind by doing so; but, we fear,, it
will also in too many instances be suggestive to hin,
of a facile mochi of relieving himself from the pecn,.
niary difficulties in winch he may be involved.
It is gratifying to know that there are but few •
persons in this town and neighbourhood who have
openly expressed aught but indignant condemnation
as to the banking conduct of Messrs. Oak and Snow;
and it is questionable whether the influence of social
greatness was ever more potently exercised in behalf
of public morality and trade integrity in this locality,.
than when rank and ability in the person' of Lord
Portrimrs and the lion, and Rev. S. G. Osborne
shared the aduons and disagreeable teak a marching
out and bringing before the public the reckless pro.
ceedings of these bankrupts. Lord Portman did not
limit himself to mental or physical exereions in
dragging to light and denouncing the wrong-doings
of the bankrupts; but with heartfelt earnestness E.
confessed to a wronged public—" I deeply lament
"that I should have been in the position of a depo-
" sitor in this bank, which in my opinion has never
'been worthy of the confidence reposed in it; and
"I feel that great responsibility rests upon my
" shoulders, since others were induced to believe
"from my risking a large sum in the bank, that I was.
" satisfied of its stability. I most deeply feel the
"pain this consideration of the subject gives my
"mind."
Let the sentiments that fell from his Lordship he
adopted and expressed by all those who, like h=.
self, occupy a high social position; and their morsk
influence in checking the growth of i laxity of sum..
inertial credit in this country, will be legitimately
and potently exercised. Bankruptcy should at all
times be considered a painful thing even to an honest
man: but, to a dishonest one, an event involving
certain criminal consequence's. If social influence
and statute law combined to stigmatize and punish
dishonest bankrupts', the honourable feelings of
society would be less frequently outraged by coming
in contact with unblushing certificated roguery; and
the distressed minds of creditors would in a measure
be relieved by the knowledge that a just punish-
ment would be meted out to the authors of their
misery, and a salutary warning be afforded to com-
mercial society.—Correspondent.

FAILURE Or MESSRS. BA.RNIS.—We are credibly
informed that Mama 33arnee have secured protec.
tion from the Inaolventa Court.