The Sun.
London, England, 1861-04-17 00:00:00

of New York itself, are already showing that they
' know how to take oirantnge of the facilities offercd
them for evading the Morrill Tariff (the Immoral
Tariff they dill it) by the lowered duties of the
South. They have contrived, it would seem, not
only to send goods, as was expected, up the Mis-
sissippi, and so smuggle them into the North, but
to have them consigned to the South, pay the low
duties there, and then deal with them as goods
which were shipped from one part of the Union to
another ! Protection is indeed caught in its own
net.

The Lord Chancellor litst evening, upon moving
the second reading of the Bankruptcy and Insol-
vency Bill, gave a masterly resume of the whole
history of that portion of our jurisprudence. Be-
ginning with an admirably lucid explanation of
the relative position eccupied in regard to each
other by debtor and creditor according to the
action of the Common Law of England, Lord CAMP-
BELL reminded the house that by the Common
Law of England no distinction whatever was
drawn between trader and non-trader, between
bankrupt and insolvent. He recalled to recollection
the fact that according to the operation of the
Common Law no remedy at all, no reparation or
compensation of any kind was afforded to the
creditor until—having brought his action—he had
duly received judgment. Then, but then only,
upon having obtained that judgment, he might levy
execution against the lands and tenements, against
the goods and chattels, against the very person of
the creditor—bat nothing of all this could he do
until he had regularly and pro forma received his
judgment. As to the debtor himself the Lord
Chancellor explained to the house how, having
had an action brought against him, who having been
arrested and imprisoned, he might, under the
ruthless regime of the old Common Law of England
—like the man in the Gespel, "until he had
paid the uttermost farthing that was due from him
to his creditor"—be subjected to the appalling
penalty of perpetual imprisonment ! Having ex-
pounded all this in regard to the dire action of
eld of the Common Law of England in all cases of
bankruptcy and insolvency, Lord CAMPBELL
traced out in rapid sequence the several modifica-
tions and mitigations of the laws relating to Bank-
ruptcy from the Act 34th HENRY VIII., down to
the 13th VICTORIA. According to that first-men-
tioned-Act of Parliament, traders were, for the
first time, rendered liable to be made bankrupt,
supposing that, having obtained the goods of others,
they made away with the property, or fled the
country, or concealed themselves. Even then,
however, under that Act of Parliament,
the debtor upon having been arrested and
incarcerated, upon having had the whole
of his property confiscated and distributed among
his creditors, still remained cruelly liable for the
debts he might have contracted and not yet satis-
fied. Even after the 13th ELIZABETH, when the
law of Bankruptcy was somewhat further amended,
the debtor retained that frightful liability to his
creditors—a liability clinging to him like the taint
of some inerradicable leprosy—the creditor (in no
way satisfied with the seizure of the entire amount
of' his debtor's property) still possessing the right
of subjecting the body of the doomed debtor to the
woeful penalty of perpetual imprisonment.
. It was only, in fact, as recently as the 4th ANNE
that the law in this particular became somewhat
more merciful. Then for the first time was it
enacted that, supposing it to have been clearly
proven that the debtor had fairly and honestly
surrendered to his creditors the whole of his pro-
perty, without any reservation whatever, after
that property of his had been duly delivered up for
distribution amongst his creditors, his body should
be released from incarceration, and he should then
be discharged in full from any liabilities for debts
of any kind theretofore contracted. The protection
thus afforded to him by the Act 4th ANNE, against
any action for all byegone debts whatsoever, being
afforded to him in the shape of what was termed a
certificate of conformity. Although long after-
wards, more than a whole century afterwards,
by the 6th GEORGE IV. the Bankruptcy Law
was consolidated by a Bill which was ripened into a
comprehensive enactment under the auspices of Lord
HENLEY, that act was to all intents and purposes
nothing more than an act of consolidation. This state
of things being left still in a plight so lamentable,
both in its chaotic uncertainty and in its reckless
extravagance of expenditure in arranging the
contest between debtor and creditor, that—but we
will let Lord CAMPBELL speak here for himself ;
" In the first place," he remarked, 4. there was a
patentee of bankruptcy, who received for doing
nothing about £B,OOO a year from the property
that ought to have been distributed among the
creditors. There was no harm in the Bankruptcy
Court being self-supporting ; he thought the estate
of the bankrupt ought to contribute to the expense
of the bankruptcy, but this patenteeship was an
enormous abuse. But there were other sinecures
with regard to the judicial system by which the
law was administered. Strange to say, in the
London district there were 70 judges, who went by
the name of the Septuagint. There was no qualifi-
cation required from them; there were 70 of
them, to each of whom a commission was
assigned." In regard to this monstrous absurdity
of the Septuagint, our present Lord High Chan-
cellor indulged the House of Peers last evening
with the subjoined amusing little autobiographic
revelation—an anecdote that we trust may not be
overlooked by the future continuator of his
own literary masterpiece, the SMOLLETT to his
HUME as Historian of England's Lord High Chan-
cellors. " He, himself," Lord CAMPBELL acknow-
ledged to the House yesterday, " was a candidate
to become one of the Septuagint the moment
he was called to the bar, and he had
the promise from the then Lord Chhncellor
that he should be appointed, not from any
merit that he could boast of, but because his father
had been at school and college -with the then Lord
Chancellor. k so happened that before a vacancy
arose All the Talents were turned out, and he was
one of the Septuagint." Yet, monstrous though
the whole system was as it then stood in the Lon-
don district under the incubus of the bankruptcy
law as then administered by the ruinous and do.
nothing, and wholly incompetent Septuagint—the
matter was actually "much worse," Lord CAMPBELL
tells us, with regard to the country districts. In the
London districts, it is true that a very considerable
part of the estates of the bankrupts came to
be consumed in mere litigation before one pass-
ing thought apparently was vouchsafed to the un
fortunate creditors--but in the country, according
to Lord CAMPBELL, in the country the estate of the
bankrupt was like a stranded vessel, like some ill-

fated derelict, fallen upon, battoned upon, and
clean devoured by Cornish Wreckers. " The com-

missioners there," said Lord CAMPBELL (there, in
those country districts), " were appointed by the
solicitors ; and the solicitor having appointed the
commissioner, the commissioner taxed the bill of
the solicitor. The abuses that took place were
almost incredible. Ho had been informed by a gen-
tleman at the bar who had sat upon a country com-
mission of bankruptcy, that on one occasion, after
they 4,3.
met, they amused themselves in a