SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as halm not bun curved for review in other forms.] Ten Years' Experience in the Manchester and Salford County Courts. By Judge E. A. Parry. (Sherratt and Hughes. is. net.) —Judge Parry gives some interesting details as to the business of the Courts, a business largely on the increase, but his chief object is to bring before the public the subject of imprisonment for debt. It is a difficult question, and what our author says is well worth attention. The "insolvent rich" file a petition in bankruptcy ; they have nothing to fear except the brutum fulmen of a deferred discharge. Here is a case. The debtor was a Duke's younger son. His liabilities were 436,311, his assets 4100. This was the result of betting and extravagance in living. Here is a case of the "insolvent poor." Debtor a labourer; total earnings of family 41 8s. per week; debts 420 10s. 2d., due to eighteen creditors, of whom eleven are travelling drapers. Judge Parry would abolish imprisonment
for all debts under 40s. This would out at the root of the "payment by instalment" system. He gives an enumeration of the plaintiffs in the cases heard on a single day. The total was four hundred and sixty, and of these one hundred and fifty-four were travelling drapers, one hundred and thirty general dealers, and sixty jewellers. It may safely be said that a very large proportion of these debts were for non-necessary things. There is, it seems, a "poor man's bankruptcy," as it may be called. A debtor owing less than 450 may apply for an Administration Order, and the Court, instead of making judgment orders for this or that debt, issues a general order for liquidation. The defect lies in the excessive amount of the Treasury fees.
Previous page
