The Sun.
London, England, 1859-03-17 00:00:00

Lord JOHN RUS3ELL'S Bankruptcy and Insol-
vency Bill has received its second reading in the
House of Commons. Although we confess that, as
a whole; we prefer the Lord Chancellor's measure,
we freely and willingly admit that there are many
valuable points contained in that of Lord JOHN
RUSSELL which may fairly be amalgamated with
that of Lord CHELMSFORD. The question is one
which cannot by any possibility be one of party.
Every one, no matter what may be the shades or
varieties of political opinion which he possesses
—whether he be a Derbyite, Palmerstonian,
or Russellite— whether he pins his faith on
BRIGHT or ROEBUCK, or any other gentleman
who can command a moderate following, or, as
used to be said in the days of the late DANIEL
O'CONNELL, " wag a respectable tail," will be
equally interested in bringing the disputed topics
to a settlement alike beneficial to all parties con-
cerned. It may be supposed that the interests of
debtors and creditors must inevitably be antago-
nistic—that they are, in fact, natural enemies, and
that every injury inflicted on the one must be gra-
tifying to the other. This is, however, a grave
mistake—a serious error. If angry feelings could
be eradicated, if the opposing parties could be
induced to pull together, and strive to render
what remained of the estate as productive as pos-
sible, it would be a great matter • but, ,as SAM
SLICK pertinently remarked, " human nature is
human nature," and we can scarcely expect that
either trader or non-trader will devote his time and
trouble for the purpose of realising assets no por-
tion whereof will be applied to his own use.
It has been stated, and with some foundation,
thatlord JOHN RUSSELL'S is altogether a creditor
bill, and. Lord CHELMSFORD'S, in many respects, a
lawyer's, measure. Now, should not a third party
be.represented? Should not the honest but unfor-
tunate debtor, who would willingly pay if in his
power, and surrenders every particle of property,
real or personal to which he is entitled, either in
possession or reversion, have some voice raised in
his favour? We know that these men are in many
quarters regarded as a social Pariah to be reprobated
by the civic Brahmins, who frequently com-
mit far greater errors than any into
'which he has been betrayed by the
pressure of circumstances. They rail at the man
unable to meet his pecuniary liabilities. He may
be a loving' husband, a kind father, a generous
friend ; but his bill has been dishonoured, and a
dungeon must be his doom.

If he has contracted that debt by fraud, if he
has increased it by a vexatious defence, or had no
just and reasonable expectation, of defraying it at
the time it was incurred,. let hint be punished by
all means.. But let the party who sentences him
to that punishment be an experienced, learned, and
unprejudiced-man, restrained by the influence of
an attending bar, and by the knowledge that
every decision which he pronounces will probably
be reported, and possibly reviewed in the public
journals. It should not be a vindictive creditor

rendered angry by the loss of money which he
might not be well able to spare, who should have
the power of incarceration placed in his hands, and
of rendering nugatory all the efforts which the
debtor is striving to make for the general arrange-
ment of his affairs• SYDNEY SMITH is reported
to have said that—" the worst possible
use to which you could put a man was
to hang him." IWe are not quite certain
that it would not be better to do so than to
incarcerate him for a protracted series of years in
a debtor's prison, where he could do no good either
for his QUEEN ,his country, his creditors, his family
or himself.

The great matters to be accomplished are—First.
the total abolition of imprisonment for debt, save
on the sentence of a competent tribunal (and that
not a County Court). Secondly, the complete
removal of the distinction between bankruptcy
and insolvency, so far as the future interests of
the insolvent debtors are concerned. We could
cite many cases within our knowledge where the
effect has been to produce a total alteration in a
will, and was thus very injurious to the debtor,
without being in the slightest degree beneficial to
the creditors. If there be a vested interest, or
contingent remainder, one which, if the insolvent
survives, will in all human probability come into
his possession, it is right and proper that it
should, when actually realised, be made liable for
his obligations. But a possible claim should not
be sold for a mere song, the bargain being only
useful to the " hard calculator " who has entered on
the speculation.

The matter is one worthy of the most serious
consideration. At present the average cost of
working small estates through bankruptcy is £l5O,
or 50 per cent. on the realised assets. They
manage matters far better, in this respect, in Por-
tugal than in Basinghall-street. The machinery is
more simple, the costs comparatively trifling, and
the funds, large or small, speedily made available
for the parties entitled thereto.

There is a talk on the other side of the Atlantic
of an impeachment of President BUCHANAN and
his Ministers—on charges of the grossest official
corruption, charges founded upon the recent report
of the investigating committee of the House of
Representatives. And at this very time Mr. COB-
DEN is making the tour of the States in America
with a view, as many suppose, to discover, if pos-
sible, how far we may wisely modify our legislative
reforms upon the model of those democratic insti-
tutions. Certainly we can have little to learn in
the way of political morality from the Republican
Executive at Washington. There may be, there
undoubtedly is, more apparent economy in the state
expenditure, year by year, in the great North
American Republic. There our brethren in the
United States are without the incubus of our almost
overwhelming civil list. They are without the
stupendous burthen of a national debt, amounting,
to the frightful aggregate of £800,000,000. They are
not drained of annual taxes (as we were during this
last year 1858), to the tune of £63,000,000. They
are without the necessity of keeping up an
army of 200,000 men, at the cost of nearly
£12,000,000, together with a naval force including
nearly 250 vessels actually in commission, manned
by 59,000 seamen and marines, and requiring an
expenditure in 1858-9 of fully £9,000,000. They
are without the trammels of red tape wound
serpentwise round the Laocoon of England, Ireland,
and Scotland. They are in no way poisoned by
the upas of a patrician race, growing, like the
banyan tree, all over this favoured land of ours,
under "the cold shade of the aristocracy." They
may have bunkum—but they have not the
barnacles. They rejoice in the possession of stump-
orators to no end, and of unnumbered filibusters—
but they are free from the race of the Viponts.
They have plenty of Knownothings—but they have
by no means the multiplicity of Do-nothings, bat-
tening upon the State within the limits of the
United Kingdom. Still the shield, though
silvery white by comparison upon one side—
is black as Erebus on the other. If
there were any need for the demonstration of
this latter assertion in regard to the democratic
constitution of the United States, proof positive
of the fact is readily proved to hand in the report
of the investigating committee of the House of
Representatives at Washington. According to
that report official corruption was never more flag-
rant—not even in the latter years of the reign of
Louis PHILIPPE, King of the French—when.
" rank and place were bought and sold," when M.
TESTE, though a flagrant exemplar of the prevail-
ing system, was by no means an exceptional phe-
nomenon. So thoroughly does this bane of official
corruption permeate the whole system of things
in the United States, according to the authorita•
tive report already specified, that a parallel to
the situation can only be discovered by the
New York Tribune, in the instance of the late
imperial pillager of Hayti, the Emperor SoimoulauE.
The association of official corruption in America,
moreover, is not directed vaguely, or at random, in
more general terms, by the power of the United
States, or by the report of the House of Represen-
tatives. The President himself, JAMES BUCHANAN,
is distinctly charged with direct participation in
the fostering and development of this gangrene of
official venality. He is declared to be guilty of
" more than tacit complicity." His impeachment,
and the impeachment of his Ministers, upon the
charge of corruption, is pronounced by the public
prints of America to be a mere question of time.
It is not to be looked for, the New York Tribune
observes, " this session"—implying it may be looked
for in another. Altogether it is a melancholy spectacle
enough this view of the official corruption of the
powers that be at Washington. Advantages of
many kinds cannot fail to follow from the bare fact
of these same most deplorable revelations. There
—in the United States themselves—the diminution
if not the total extinction of the evil system is
inevitable as one of the earliest consequences.
Here—the disclosure in a manner so glarinc, of the
truth, otherwise, we may presume. just possibly
within the range of popular conjecture, namely,
that the political system in the American Republic
is not quite perfection,•
may tend in a great mea-
sure, let us hope, to dissipate the frivolous delusion
which had prevailed of late amongst the most luke-
warm of our so-called Reformers—the preposterous
delusion that there is a peril incurred of our going
so far in our imitation of the American system
that we should run the hazard of subverting our
Constitution.

Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston abstained
from voting on the motion for the abolition of church rates.
Lord Stanley voted for the second reading of Sir John
Trelawny's bill, and Sir John Pakitgton against it.
Lord John Russell's resolution relative to the
Reform Bill is placed on the list of motions of which notice
was given on Tuesday—as "an amendment to the question
for the second reading of the Representation of the Peoplo
Bill." _ _

At the anniversary meeting of the Statistical
Society on Tuesday, it was stated that Lord Johit Russell
had acceded to the request of the council to be placed in
nomination for the office of president in succession to Lord
Stanley.

Madame Goldschmidt and her husband will, it is
said, visit Leeds in the autumn, and give their services gra-
tuitously at a grand concert in aid of the Leeds Mechanics'
Institution.

Jan. 15, Feb. 12,
1859. I 1859. Increase. Decrease.
Bank of England 20,444,689, 20,830,036 385,347
Private Banks 3,343,0261 . 3,407,186 64,160
Joint-stock Banks 2,904,770 2,933,086 28,316
---- -
Total in England. 26,692,485 27,170,308 477,823
Scotland 4,100,052 3,904,022 196,030
Ireland 6,729,747 6,898,943 169,196

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THE SUN.
THURSDAY. MARCH 17, 1859.