The Sun.
London, England, 1829-02-02 00:00:00

ing with more dignity and some profit at the Bankrupt
Court—eld men, alack, wanting the pastime of a little
business, and the dignity of a little brief authority'—
and a few, very few, appointed on account of their fitness
for the office. I do not mean to say, however, that ac-
complishment is never made the chief motive for the ap-
pointment, and is always overlooked—though it is but
rarely considered."
In the country, the case is still worse, for there
" accomplishment" is never made the motive of ap-
pointment ! but one of the parties, the petitioning
creditor, actually names the judges who are to ab-
judicate between him and the intended bankrupt;
and that too, when the first hearing, on which the
question, bankrupt or not bankrupt, is to be decided,
is held in private, the person principally affected,
his agents or counsel, carefully excluded, and his
opponents heard ex-parte, by persons having a di-
rect interest to decide in his favour. Let us hear
Mr. Montague on this point :
_ . .

" When a Commission is issued, the Commissioners are
summoned to a private meeting, at which no person but
the creditor and his friends are permitted to attend. If he
swear that 1001. is due to him, and he can produce a wit-
ness who will swear that he traded and denied himself to a
creditor, the party against whom the Commission has
issued is declared a bankrupt without having had any op-
portunity to cross-examine the witnesses, or to be heard in
Lis own defence, and without having any !notice whatever
of the proceedings; the first notice which he has, is from
the messenger who seizes his property, and from the
Gazette which publishes his bankruptcy; and, if he think
proper to dispute the bankruptcy, he is not entitled to see
the proceedings before the Commissioners, upon which
they have 6eclared him a bankrupt."—Letter -to Mr.
Sugdett, p. 4.
" Sir Samuel Romilly, in his examination before a Com.
mittee of the House of Commons, speaks to the same
effect. He says, Another part of the Bankrupt Law,
which has long appeared to me to require alteration, and
which I have known in man) instances productive of ex-
traordinary injustice and oppression, is the facility with
which Commissions can be taken out. If a trader is in-
debted to any man in 1001., or if any person will swear
that he is indebted to him in that amount, the real or pre-
tended creditor, if he can get any witness to swear that an
act of bankruptcy has been committed, may, without the
least previous intimation, and by a mere ex-parte proceed-
ing, make his debtor a bankrupt; the immediate conse-
quence is, that all the man's property is taken possession
of; his trade is put a stop to, and he is compelled to sur-
render to the Commission, and to submit to be examined
as to all his concerns : and all this, though he might be
able, if an opportunity were afforded him, to prove that he
never committed any act of bankruptcy, and that he
does not owe the man, who is prosecuting the Commission,
a single shilling. This proof he can only be allowed to
give upon a petition to the Lord Chancellor to supersede
the Commission, or in an action which he may bring
against the messenger or the assignee to recover his pro-
perty. Several months must elapse; several years may,
and sometimes do, elapse before he can have such a peti-
tion or such an action finally decided. In the meantime,
not only is all his property withheld from him, but it is
in the hands of the person with whom he is contending, and
affords the means of protracting the litigation, and of sup-
porting the oppressor in his injustice."—lbid. p. 8.
It would appear extraordinary that in a country,
priding itself (God knows how justly !) on the ad-
ministration of justice, such a mockery should have
existed one Session after it was exposed; but this
has been known from year to year, pamphlets have
been written, paragraph after paragraph published,
committees appointed, evidence collected, reports
made, and yet it continues ; no one defends it openly
—but behind the curtain there is a mass of influence
which will always be ready to oppose any reform by
the dead weight of silent votes. Mr. Cullen has
shown the amount of interest which is arrayed in
favour of the 70 London Commissioners ; but who
can enumerate the provincial barristers and country
attornies, with their several friends, patrons, and
clients, who will rise with one accord to defend a
system under which they derive much more profit
than is commonly imagined ? These, too, must be
protected by the County Member, and thus the
character of the laws must be sacrificed to the inte-
rests of its inferior agents. Mr. Peel's brother-in-
law (Master Eden) says, " Unless a complete al-
teration be made in the tribunal by which bankrupt
law is primarily administered, it will be in vain to
expect that the reproach which has attached to the
system will be removed." Yet we doubt most ex-
ceedingly whether Mr. Peel, with all his professions,
will stir one step, or vote one shilling, to relieve
this commercial country from so foul a blot upon its
Legislature.
- - - -

(FROM THE ATLAS.)
POPE BENEDICT.—This amiable pontiff having
to receive three English gentlemen who showed
certain signs of repugnance to the ceremony of in-
troduction, adroitly turned it off by saying, " I
know very well what your opinions are, and that
you have no faith in our spiritual privileges; but lii
suppose you will have no objection to receive a
blessing from an old man ?" When a nobleman in
the time of George I. was very roundly taken to task
ou his return -from Rome for not having tried to
convert the Pope, he made answer that " he might
have done so, but that he was not aware that he
had any thing better to offer him, if he had suc-
ceeded.' A Mrs. Millar, who published a book of
travels a few years ago, boasts that at some grand
ceremony at the Capella Sistina, she stood np,while
all the other persons present knelt, showing by her
looks her contempt for the mummery around her.
And this in Rome, where no look from any indi-
vilual you meet, high or low, priest or layman,
man or woman, ever reminds you that you are a
hrretic or a foreigner, and where the air is purified
by deep policy and long refinement from imperti-
m.nce ! We have seen a Roman cardinal return
tie bow of a galley-slave (the red stockings making
a leg to the yellow !)—an English Duke bows to a
w hole street in passing, but does not notice the
low obeisance of the beggar who sweeps the cross-