The Sun.
London, England, 1860-03-19 00:00:00

TILE NEW BANKRUPTCY BILL.

Front the reception accorded in the House of
Commons to the Bankruptcy Bill of the Attorney-
General and the view taken of it in the City, there
is every reason to hope that this subject, which has
been the opprobrium of our commercial legislation
throughout the entire experience of the existing
generation, will at length be brought to a satisfac-
tory adjustment. The principles now set forth by
the Attorney-General have met with almost
unanimous concurrence, and, although he antici-
pates that the bill may be found to require many
modifications in committee, it is certain that
the trading public would be ready to welcome
it even if it were far short of perfection, and
to trust to its being amended under future ex-
perience, rather than see another session pass with-
out any but abortive results. Instead of 33 per
cent. of the assets of bankrupts being squandered
in the emelt, it is hoped that 5 per cont. may for the
future meet all the outlay, and that this change
may be effected without material damage to the
interests of any of the existing functionaries—such
as the Commissioners and official assignees—who
are entitled to consideration. The "messengers,"
whose emoluments out of the funds of unhappy
creditors appear to range from £1,500 to £2,000
a-year, -while their duties are simply those signified
by their title, seem the principal parties doomed
to suffer the total abolition of their offices. The
removal of the distinction between bankrupts and
insolvents and of the restriction against any
traders being allowed to apply for an adjudication
in bankruptcy unless they can show assets of £l5O,
the appointment of a single judge in place of the
existing five Commissioners, whose actual judicial
duties occupy on the part of each only three hours
weekly, and the transfer of all the ministerial and
administrative business of the Court to the regis-
trars, who are to,make circuits to the various dis-
tant localities comprised in the London districts,
are all expected to work well. The conversion of
the Insolvent Court in Portugal-street to an auxili-
ary Bankruptcy Court, to deal with estates where
the assets do not exceed £3OO, is also regarded
favourably ; but the provinces will perhaps feel
some disappointment that the district courts
are to continue until opportunities shall arise
from vacancies among the district Commissioners
for transferring the jurisdiction to the County
Courts. The reasons for this delay, however, ap-
pear valid. With regard to questions of conveni-
ence and equity the most important provisions are
those for allowing estates to be privately adminis-
tered upon the desire of three-fourths of the credi-
tors in value, and for estates being withdrawn from
bankruptcy at axy stage when the creditors may
prefer the control of a private assignee. The ne-
cessity for such powers is illustrated by the fact
that the proportion of estates wound up under
bankruptcy is only about 0 per cent. of the number
under trust deeds, and, although a reform of the
Bankruptcy Court may probably reverse this
state of affairs and make a private liquidation
the exception instead of the rule, such a
change can be brought about only by gradual
experience. It will be a question, however, whether
eety minority that may dissent from a private liqui-
dation should not have power of appeal to the
judge, since it might sometimes happen that a
single creditor or two or three creditors, represent-
ing three-fourths of the claims, might be found
to have encouraged the bankrupt in a reckless
course, and for this reason to desire his affairs
to be husked up, while the creditors represent-
ing the remaining fourth might bo the real victims
in the case. A few years back a large failure
occurred, in which the bankers of the insolvent
were the principal claimants. The amount, al-
though heavy, was comparatively unimportant to
them, but they did not wish to figure as having
carelessly advanced such a sum to a known specu-
ortin.dthe
later and all their anxiety was to write off the debt
n
fourth, havela
idone o with
the it.est a
te Representing
such
p ers three-fourths
could
de-
mand a. private liquidation against the desire of the
remaining who might have the cause'sc tom•
Couarrtt.z2oof,,the futeere expenses
mercial morality
of the Bankruptcy
sions, which will cease on th 10(% for official pen-
sent recipients, is heneefote,e e.emise of their pre-
totbe defrayed feem
the £3,1g0
-ourt
toa the Bank for keep-
the Consolidated Funoe, vallue
is-
to
bbaei.
n(l3 n
the same time a
lng yearly
t the ancricioruanti°llo°F f
tinned, and as the Court derive an theessseawnoi
about £46,000 from the interest
abeyance, it is belioved that under else amended
system its supplies will be ample, although
it is intended to abolish all per centage fees, and
to charge only for registration and aoijudioation,
I the minimum registration fee being £5, and the
maximum £l5, according to the value of the es-
tate. The expense of an application to the Court
will, in point of fact, be little, and, with regard
to that expense, the creditors themselves will
have no control. In estates of less than
£l,OOO creditors, moreover, are to have the poyver
of placing the administration in the hands of the
County Court; but it is believed that, under the
reduced expenses of the regular Court, this alterna-
tive is not likely to be often resorted to. Printed
quarterly accounts of the progress of liquida-
tion in each case are to be transmitted to the
several creditors, and efficient checks are to be in-
troduced against malversation. Cases of fraud
will be treated on definite rules under criminal
jurisdiction, and the system of granting class certi-
cates, which, from the conflicting decisions of the
commissioners has been brought into thorough con-
tempt, will be done away with. There is also a
provision for enabling the representatives of per-
sons who have died insolvent to administer the
estate in bankruptcy as if the parties were still
alive. The bill is to be read a second time on
a
Thu reseay week, and the Attorney-General
s orney-General hopes
it may be passed through committee, so as to be
a carried up to the Lords by the beginning of June,
consummation which
will also be heartily desired
le_y every member of the mercantile coma.unity.—
Times' City 4rticte,

lhEi SUN, 4440 Ni-ON,

ASSIZE INTELLIGENCE.

MIDLAND CIRCUIT.—LINCOLN, March 14.
CROWN COURT.
(Before Mr. Justice Willes.)
Thomas Peel, farmer, stood charged upon an in-
dictment with the wilful murder of Mark Brewer,
at Snelland, having on the 12th Dec., 1859, and at
other times between that day and the 17th day of
Dec.' 1859, unlawfully and violently assaulted the
said Mark Brewer. He stood further charged upon
the coroner's inquisition on the Bth Feb., 1860, with
the manslaughter of the said Mark Brewer, and to
both charges he pleaded not guilty.
Mr. Fitzjames Stephen and Mr. Huish conducted
the case for the prosecution ; Mr. Macaulay, Q.C.,
and Mr. O'Brien appeared for the defence.
Mr. Stephen, in his opening address to the jury,
said that the case, which was involved in consider-
able difficulty, had been the subject of many ru-
mours and exaggerated statements ; he therefore
desired the jury to rid their minds of any previous
impressions they had received from reports they
might have heard or read. In the commencement
he would relieve their minds from one portion of
the responsibility under the sense of which they
might be labouring—namely, that of having to try
the prisoner upon the capital charge. Having con-
sidered the facts which he was prepared to esta-
blish, and which failed to show that the prisoner
was actuated by malice, he felt that he should pro-
perly discharge his duty as counsel for the prosecu-
tion by placing the case before them as one in which
the only question was whether the prisoner was
guilty of the manslaughter of the deceased. The
learned counsel proceeded to state the facts, which,
as proved, were in substance these :—The deceased,
Mark Brewer, a young man aged 26 years, was
servant of Thomas Peel, sen., a farmer living at
Snelland, and father of the prisoner. After being
some months in Mr. Peel's service he went home,
having a pain in his back, supposed to be, and which
was treated as, lumbago. After 10 or 12 days he
resumed his work at his master's, but returned home
on Wednesday, Dec. 14, and consulted a neigh-
bouring surgeon, Mr. Laving. He went back to
Mr. Peel's on the 18th, and worked up to the Sun-
day preceding Christntas-day, when, for the last
time, he again returned home, and there continued
until January 21, when he died, being up to that
date confined to his bed, and attended by Mr.
Wran gham, a surgeon, and Mr. Laving his assis-
tant, and his case treated as sympathetic fever,
arising from some local injury which the deceased
stated that he had received, but of what precise
nature Mr. Wrangham was not aware. According
to the evidence of the medical witnesses who
examined the body after death, that death re-
sulted from a diseased state of the joint between
the sacrum and the ilium, the cartilaginous lin-
ings of which were found to have suppurated to
so great an extent as to cause a dislocation of
the joint. This suppuration was a consequence of
inflammation of the parts, produced, it might be,
by a violent strain, possibly by a blow on the edge
of the left ilium, possibly by the fall of some heavy
body upon the pelvis, or by the rolling of some
great weight over it. The chest upon being exa-
mined showed that the pleura had been so much
inflamed as to cause adhesion by membranous bands,
and the lungs were found congested. These latter
appearances were, however, traceable to inflamma-
tion resulting from the diseased state of the sacro-
iliac joint ; and on the part of the prosecution it
was advanced, in the first instance, that this diseased
state of the joint had originated from violence used
towards the deceased man by the prisoner Thomas
Peel, the younger ; and, secondly, that even if the
violent acts of the prisoner had not been the pri-
mary and proximate cause of the disease, they had,
by aggravating a pre-existing disease, been the
proximate cause of his death, on January 21, at an
earlier period than that at which life would have
been terminated by the natural progress of that
disease alone. The particular acts of violence by
the prisoner to which the death of the deceased
were attributed were two—first, a blow inflicted
with a fork-shaft upon his back ; and, secondly, a
blow received by falling upon the floor while being
dragged from his bed by the prisoner. The evi-
dence of the infliction of these blows being, how-
ever, mainly deducible from statements made by
the deceased, under the imminent fear of impend-
ing death, which were inseparable from accounts of
filthy and brutal conduct of the prisoner towards
him, wholly irrelevant to the particular charge
upon which the learned counsel for the prosecution
proposed to proceed, much time was occupied both
in opposing their admission and in subsequent exa-
mination respecting the truth of them. Some of
those statements had been reduced to writing by a
magistrate, the Rev. Mr. Hodgson, others were
oral, and had not been written down by those who
heard them, and the admission of all was strongly
resisted by the learned counsel for the prisoner on
the preliminary inquiry as to whether, when they
were made, the deceased was under a settled hope-
less conviction of impending death. They were
admitted, and wero iu eub.itu,c—Lhat, on two
occasions, when the deceased was feeding the horses
in Mr. Peel's stable, the prisoner had come in, un-
dono the fore part of Brewer's trousers, and pulled
him out of the stable in a violent and indecent
manner, causing on the first occasion great pain to
the deceased ; that on the next day the prisoner
" clammed" him by the neck, twisted a handker-
chief about it, dragged him to the wall of the stable,
and fastened him up to a nail, his feet being about
six inches from the ground ; that a boy, named
John Smith, came into the stable, and seeing him,
called out to John Whittaker, " Mark Brewer has
been and hung himself," upon which Whittaker
entered and took him down ; that once the prisoner
had made water on his face as he lay in bed, and
dragged him out of bed by his feet ; that in the
middle of the same week the prisoner struck him
on the back with a fore-shaft, which he said hurt
him a good deal. These statements were corrobo-
rated by evidence that upon two occasions, when
the prisoner visited the deceased during his last
illness, and expressed a hope that he would not die,
several of these acts were admitted by the prisoner
to be true, though the more filthy charges he de-
nied. He pulled the bedclothes off, he said, to
scare Brewer, and to make him work. The im-
mediate injury done by the indecent pulling of the
prisoner out of the stable had, however, been very
grossly exaggerated in the neighbourhood, and it
was rumoured that a part of his body had been torn
away, and the prisoner threatened the deceased,
that if he recovered he would " follow the law of
him," and, in allusion to his Christian name, would
" Mark" him. Brewer referred often to the pull-
ing of him out of the stable as having caused the
pain which he felt in his back; and the evidence or
all the medical witnesses was that the diseased
state of the pelvis could not be referred to any such
cause ; that the blow with the fore-shaft, or a fall
from the nail where he was suspended, could not,
except under conditions not proved to have existed,
have caused that disease. A fall on the floor, while
being dragged out of bed, might have occasioned it;
but there was no evidence of a fall upon the floor,
such as could cause it, nor was there any external
mark to indicate injury by any such means. It
was proved. also, that as long since as two years
the deceased had while at harvest work complained
of pains in his back ; that in November, and before
any of the acts had been committed by the prisoner,
he had spoken of having fallen with a sack of wheat,
which caused him pain in the back and prevented
him doing heavy work; and that, whilst assisting
the prisoner in holding a crutch on which a pig
was being carried, he fell under its weight. It was
also elicited by the cross-examination of the wit-
nesses for the prosecution that the deceased had told
several falsehoods respecting his father and the
housekeeper, who, on one occasion of his giving ac-
counts to her of the treatment he had received, told
1111 n she believed they were only some of his lies.
Mr. Macaulay, for the defence, submitted to the
Court that there was no evidence of any act done
by the prisoner to which the origin of the disease
which eventually led to the death of the deceased
could possibly be attributed; but the Court deter-
mining that there was evidence for the jury, he ad-
, deessed them, expressing Ms surprise that a bill of
murder should have been preferred, and that the
grand jury should hare presented such a charge.
On what evidence they acted he was unable to con-
ceive. its learned fricied had discarded it, but
ou
nn untrustworthiness tw
evidencer t
proof of a quantity of stuff had been introduced
which could only serve to prejudice their minds.
Tie then commented on the surgical evidence, and
liiheassfroefidthei
on that relating to the acts of the prisoner, on the
y
ndepcamrr edl°iScistteadte:flanedntws,hainchd
lie should (and 'subsequently did) lay before d diem,
that the deceased had made e frequent
complaints of
his back, and that
he had suffered falls under cir-
cumstances calculated, if the medical evidence might
be trusted, to bring about, the diseased condition of
the of
pelvis Which they had heard.
The learned Judge summed
up the evidence upon
the charge of manslaughter, and the
jury, after re-
tiring for a while, returned a verdict of not guilty.
He was subsequently charged with assaults com-
mitted upon the deceased, and one or
nesses, recalled, gave evidence of the deceased
man's
statement of brutal and disgusting acts already
mentioned. A boy who slept in bed with Brewer'
at the time when, as the deceased affirmed, one of
these filthy acts was done, had covered his head
with elothes, and so had only heard the threat of
the prisoner, not seen the assault.
Mr. Macaulay addressed the jury for the pri-
soner, contending that there was no evidence of
the actual assault but the statement of the deceased,
whose evidence could not be relied on as true.
The learned Judge summed up very
he jury returned a 0 verdict fgu I'lt y.
He was sentenced to six calendar months' ira.