SCOTCHING THE BANKRUPTCY SNAKE.
The Scotch enjoy the reputation of being a long-headed people, but in the article of conscience they seem singularly short. With the “Scotch system” of banking, as exemplified not long since in the broken Western Bank, our commercial readers doubtlessly are pretty well familiar; and we are willing to believe that their familiarity, with a not less doubtlessness, has been productive of contempt. It now appears that the “Scotch system” which has been applied to bankruptcy is fully as contemptible as that applied to banks. Defaulting English tradesmen make use of this Scotch system as a means of getting comfortably free of all their creditors, and taking quiet sights at those who wish to see them safe in quod. As soon as business blackguards find our soil too hot to hold them, they coolly start away to Scotland for a change of air, and find the Northern climate most refreshing to their pockets. Directly they begun to feel shaky in their credit, they pack up their portmanteaus for a journeying due North, and don’t think of coming back till they are quite set on their legs again.
With reference to this system, the Times last week informed us that-
“The trade of the Scotch lawyers in getting English bankrupts quietly out of all their difficulties is still said to be increasing, the decision of the judges at Edinburgh a few month back, which virtually dispensed with the necessity for the parties to be so designated as to insure their identification by their distant creditors, having greatly smoothed all such operations, So long as the system is tolerated, it will scarcely be necessary for the Government to trouble themselves by proposing any measure of bankruptcy reform in this country.”
The writer of this makes a most judicious choice of words when he speaks of the Scotch “trade” of getting scoundrels out of difficulties. A lawyer’s business usually is spoken of as his “profession,” but when he does things unprofessional another term should be applied to it. As in the law’s eye the assistant in a crime must share the penalty, so an attorney who assists in a dishonourable system for the purpose of assisting swindlers out of punishment, ought in justice to be viewed as a dishonest trader.
As Scotchmen always stick together, especially in trade, of course we cannot hope that the Edinburgh judges will alter their decision, while the Edinburgh lawyers daily fatten on its faults. It remains, therefore, we think, for the English judges now at once to lay their Scotch brethren, which is moving all our bankrupts to take tickets for the North. If this “Scotch system” continue, Scotland will be looked on as a refuge for our rascals, and a sanctuary or safety-place for those who swindle us in trade. In fact Edinburgh now is the Gretna Green of commerce, and is repaired to by all our runaways in debt.
If an English law be passed to check “the trade of Scotch lawyer” of which the Times, and every honest tradesman, so complains, we suppose we shall hear talk about “Another Scottish Grievance,” and he threatened with (at least) Annihilation in revenge. Sandiemon McLevi will tear his blue bag into bits, and make oath that for each shred he’ll have a pound of English gold, by way of compensation for his injured legal rights; and his example will be followed by all the Scottish Jew-attorneys, who, being noted to the world as the sharpest sharps in Christendom, are not likely to submit to be laid flat without a fight for it.
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