Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/560

 546 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY the object of punishing the fraudulent or vexing the unfor- tunate. The legal illusion that a debtor prhnd facie must be wicked, produced in the bankruptcy law, as indeed was natural, a curious procedure which began in secrecy and ex parte processes, and every stage of which was capable of being abused. The declaration in 1831 of a Lord Chancellor, made from his place in Parliament, that " ever since he had been acquainted with the profession he had uniformly heard two evils complained of, the state of the bankrupt law and the mode of its administration," was but the echo of general opinion. The adjudication, with which the per- formance opened, deprived the debtor (till it was reversed) of all his property, left him absolutely penniless, and pil- loried his name as that of an insolvent in the Gazette. Yet this decree was granted ex parte in his absence, without the knowledge of anybody except the one soi-disant creditor who had chosen to put the law in motion. All that was needed was an affidavit of debt, coupled with a bond which bound the deponent to substantiate his allegation. Upon such material, a fiat issued to a group of commissioners, who assembled from their houses in town or country, as the case might be, met in private at a coffee-house or inn, and after an ex parte hearing declared the supposed debtor bankrupt. A warrant was thereupon delivered to a messenger, directing him to enter the bankrupt's house, to lay hand upon his furniture, ready money, property, and books of account, and to serve him with a summons to appear. The sight of the officer armed with this authority was the first notice to the trader of an occurrence which put at issue his whole commercial reputation. Under this system the first merchant in London or in Manchester was liable to suffer unspeakable annoyance, and the whole Royal Exchange, as it was said, might wake up one morning and find themselves in the Gazette. An adjudication so obtained necessarily lacked the ele- ment of finality. It could be impeached by the bankrupt himself as well as by others before any other civil court, even after the whole estate of the bankrupt had been divided.