The Sun.
London, England, 1850-08-15 00:00:00

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- -7 - - - - -
LONDON, THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 1850.

Unmitigated satisfaction will be experienced
throughout the United Kingdom in consequence of
the return to the Sunday delivery in the Post-office
department which we had the gratification of an-
nouncing in our impression of yesterday. The re-
storation of this system of arrangement will be
welcomed by all classes of the community not merely
as a means of securing an inestimable convenience,
but also, and in a particular manner, as a guarantee
.gainst numerous and most oppressive grievances .

The County Courts Extension Bill, having passed
through both Houses of Parliament, and the " diffe-
rences" having been arranged by the submission of the
Commons, may now be considered to be the law of
the land. It will at least become so on the Ist of
October next, on which day it will come into opera-
tion ; and as the long vacation, so far as the superior
courts are concerned, has already commenced, so that
no progress can be made in any suit until the 24th of
October, there can be no reason why any creditor,
or creditor's attorney, should resort to the more ex-
pensive and more dilatory tribunals to enforce
the liquidation of demands not exceeding 501. We
grehtly fear, however, that the effect of the enact-
ments conferring a concurrent jurisdiction for all
sums between 201. and 501. will be to neutralize the
benefits anticipated from this just and salutary mea-
sure. The respectable members of the profession, and
we are happy to acknowledge that there are very
many such, will undoubtedly regard the true in-
terests of their clients, and will not, unless for
sufficient cause, resort to the superior courts, when
the matter can be as fully adjudicated upon
before the inferior courts. But the sharp practi-
tioners, those who by their disgraceful proceedings
have fomented strife and brought an honourable body
into discredit and disrepute, will consider nothing
beyond the amount of emolument they can obtain for
themselves, and will only desire to swell the bills of
costs to the greatest possible amount. Although
such persons are numerically inferior to their more
worthy brethren, they more than compensate for the
paucity of their numbers by a mischievous activity.
The higher class, although they do not reject such
business, when requested by friends or connexions to
undertake it, are by no means anxious for such prac-
tice. They strongly recommend their adjustment
out of court, and will rather advise their clients to
show indulgence to debtors, or even to sacrifice a
portion of their demands, rather than proceed to un •
mediate extremities. It is only when all prospect of
an amicable arrangement is out of the question that
they at length institute proceedings, and the de-
fendants will only have themselves to blame if they
are put to costs by unfairly resisting just demands-
This laudable conduct, reflecting the highest
honour on these gentlemen, is but too often not duly
appreciated by clients. The latter frequently sacri-
fice their own interests by placing matters in impro-
li
per hands, to which they would be sorry to confide
any subject of real importance. There is, unfortu-
nately, a passion for litigation abroad, a desire to
have debtors against whom there may be some feeling
of irritation in their power, and thus it is that the
parties who show no mercy, who disregard the ordi-
nary professional etiquette of writing to the de-
fendant before instituting proceedings, who, in
Lief, let slip no opportunity to worry and
annoy the debtor, although the creditor
may thereby lose his entire debt, are resorted to, and
obtain a large proportion of the transactions for the
recovery of small demands. We are convinced,
therefore, that a new Bill must be brought forward
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the recess, when our Legislators are free from the tur-
moil of Parliamentary business, and can apply their
minds without disturbance, and concentrate their

thoughts upon the subject, so as to render it as per-
fect as it can possibly be made.
A case reported in The Sun of Monday evening
affords a strong illustration of a serious evil now in
operation, which requires an immediate remedy.
Shortly before the rising of the Insolvent Court on
Saturday evening, an application was made to the
presiding Judge (Mr. Commissioner LAW) to order
the discharge of a person named JOHN BROWN, who
had been committed to Whitecross-street Prison, on
the preceding Thursday, by the Judge of
the Whitechapel County Court, fur non-
payment of a debt which he had been
ordered to liquidate by instalments, although after
the judgment had been pronounced, and before any
order for committal, he had received final protection
from the Insolvent Court against all his debts, in-
cluding the one in question, of which he had ap-
prised the County Court Judge when summoned for
not continuing to pay the instalments ; after some
discussion, the Learned Commissioner intimated that
" the warrant of discharge should issue when he had
a copy of the warrant of commitment and a copy of
his order in the former case."

A second collision has thus taken place between
the authorities of the Insolvent Court and the County
Courts. Such cases are ever to be deprecated, and
although we entertain no doubt whatsoever that
Commissioner LAW is fully justified in the decision
at which he has arrived, and that he could have come
to no other conclusion without sacrificing the dignity
of the Court of which he is so efficient a member,
much confusion may arise and serious annoyance be
fore the matter is finally settled. Our facetious
contemporary Punch some time since depicted the
miseries of a " Shuttlecock Pauper ;" of an unhappy
" Casual," whose place of settlement was disputed,
and who was bandied about from workhouse to work-
house, and parish to parish, until the point should be
finally decided—
" But right boys, or wrong,. ,
Young or old, weak or strong,
I'm only a Casual, pass me along."
Poor JOHN BROWN'S may be even a more wretched
fate; he may be a "Shuttlecock Debtor," spending his
time in pleasing alternations between his home and
the debtors' prison, and prevented from obtaining
employment to support his family. One day com-
mitted from the County Courts for; non-payment of
a debt against which he is nominally "protected"
by the order of the Insolvent Court ; again discharged
after a few days' imprisonment; again arrested and
again discharged ; and, so on, until the question has
been finally set at rest. We cannot suppose that any
such monstrous power should be conferred upon the
Judgeseion of
of the
competent County Courts as to supersede the
is
tribunals, and to disre-
gard the adjudication of the Insolvent or Bankrupt
Courts in a manner that the superior courts
of common law would not venture to emulate. Why,
we ask, should there be one law for the rich and
another for poor persons owing leas than 20/. ? The
judgment of the Insolvent Court relieves the insolvent
from every demand, and thenceforth his person and
personal property is freed from aggression, at least
until a re-hearing be obtained before the same tribu-
nal by which he was discharged. In order to obtain
this boon, he is obliged to surrender all his
property, real and personal, in possession
or expectancy, a few excepted articles only being
saved which the humanity of the law allowed
to prevent his total destitution, his being cast liter-
ally naked on the world. Why should the County
Courts be permitted to interfere with this first and
salutary law ? Why subject the parties to new in-
carceration, after they had been declared by compe-
tent authority entitled to their freedom ? By the
rules of practice approved of by the Lord Chief
Baron, and four of his judicial brethren, the dis-
charge of a defendant " under any statute relating to
bankrupts, or any Act for the relief of insolvent debtors,"
is set forth as a valid defence to ariy new demand in
the County Courts. Why should it not also stay
proceedings on any judgments that had been previ-
ously obtained, and the amounts and particulars
whereof were duly inserted in the defendant's schedule ?

But it will not be sufficient to stop here, especially
since the jurisdiction has been so greatly extended.
The mode of recovery of County Court judgments
should be assimilated as far as practicable to those in

the Queen's Bench, Chancery, or Exchequer. An
interim protection in bankruptcy or insolvency
should as fully guard the party obtaining it from

annoyance by the officers of the minor as of the su-
perior tribunals. It has heretofore unfortunately
been considered that if an order for committal had
been issued before the " protection order," the latter
was not available against it, the former being by a
species of fiction considered as in the nature of a
"contempt of court" that was not as a matter of
course purged by payment of the demand. This ab-
surd distinction should, however, be abolished with all
convenient speed, and the judgments and orders of
the superior and County Courts placed on the same
footing, so far as the bankruptcy or insolvency of de-
fendants be concerned.

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC.

The French Governtneiii has published the follow-
ing telegraphic dispatch announcing the arrival of the
PRESIDENT of the Republic at Dijon—

"THE PREFECT OF THE COTE D'OR TO THE MINISTER
OF THE INTERIOR.

"Dijon, Aug. 13, 8 A.M.
"The President of the Republic has been admirably
received in the Cote d'.or. He has made his entry into
Dijon in the midst of au, immense crowd, who uttered
the loudest acclamations.'

The Legitimatists are in a state of profound conster-
nation. It appears that a communication has been
Emperoried
ofm RUSSIA S
. Pete
hrssbur received
pronounced against any
attempt at restoring either branch of the Bourbon
family, it being his determination to aid by every
frotagh, announcing that the
method in his power in securing the Imperial Crown
fur Prince Louts NAPOLEON, whose cousin, the Due
DE LEUCHTENDERG, is the husband of a Russian
Archduchess.
A meeting of Legitimatists was held at the house
of General ST. PRIEST, on Tuesday, to consider this
communication, and an agent was dispatched at once
to. the Duc DE BOURDEAUX at Wiesbaden.
Differences of a most serious nature have arisen
between the PRESIDENT of the Republic and General
BARAGUAY
CHANGARNID'HILLIERSER ; the latter is accused by General
Aspiring to the Presidency
i
and intriguing against the PRESIDENT of the Repub-
lic with the Assembly. General BARAGUAT D'HIL-
LIERS announces publicly that on the return of the
PRESIDENT, General CHANGARNIER will be removed
from the command of the garrison of Paris.
The fact that the PRESIDENT is accompanied in his
tour by the Count DE AIONTALESILIERT is much com-
mented on. The opinions of the PRESIDENT must
have undergone a strange alteration since
the day on which he wrote his cele-
brated letter to bl, EDGAR NET, or he
surely would not have chosen as his companion the
patron of the Inquisition, the apologist of St. Bar-
tholomew s, and the miracle-monger of the Univers.
The PRESIDENT of the Republic, by decree of the
4th, declares that arrivals from countries in which
the yellow fever rages may, according to circum-
stances, be subjected to quarantine of from three to
ten days in the Mediterranean ports. If, during Oa
quarantine, no case of yellow fever should occur, the
arrivals will be admitted to free pratique ; but, if
necessary, a quarantine of observation may, by order
of the sanitary administration, be prolonged for ten
days, from the termination of the last case of such
kind of sickness.

The Council of State has decided that the Standish
Gallery and the Spanish Museum, in the Louvre,
are the personal property of the ex-King Louts
PHILIPPS.

Orleans andVierzon),
BUSINESS DONE IN FOREIGN RAILWAYS AT THE
and Amiens, 7
L9:4°ol''l SrocK-EICHANCE, AUG. 14.
Anglo-Italian (late Italian and Austrian), 1— Boulogne
14 tA—East Indian,7k ou R en and Havre, 9%.
14—Central of France