before the commissioners, but not before the Court of Review, in which court suitors appear by counsel. The judge of the court, with consent of the Lord Chancellor, may make rules and orders for regulating the practice and sittings of the court, and the conduct of the officers and practitioners. The court has an official seal with which all proceedings and documents in bankruptcy requiring the seal are sealed. An appeal lies from the commissioners to the Court of Review, and the decision of the Court of Review on the merits as to the proof of the debt is final, unless an appeal is lodged to the Lord Chancellor within one month. The Lord Chancellor or the Court of Review may direct an appeal case to be brought before the House of Lords under certain

years' standing, and three other judges, persons of the same description, and six barristers of seven years' standing, to be called commissioners of the court. The court was constituted a Court of Law and Equity, and, together with every judge and commissioner thereof, was to exercise all the rights and privileges of a Court of Record, as fully as the same are exercised by any of the courts or judges at Westminster. Before this court fiats in bankruptcy were to be prosecuted in London, and commissioners under the great seal were no longer to be appointed as formerly in each bankruptcy. The four judges of the court sat as a Court of Review. By 5 & 6 Wm. IV. c. 29, the number of the judges was reduced from four to three. By 5 & 6 Vict. c. 122, several import-circumstances. The judges and commisant alterations were made in the Court of Bankruptcy. The Court of Review is formed of one judge (§ 64), instead of three judges; and district courts of bankruptcy are established (§ 46). One of the Vice-Chancellors is now chief judge of the Court of Review.

The Court of Review has superintendence in all matters of bankruptcy, and jurisdiction to hear and determine all such matters of this description as were formerly brought by petition before the Lord Chancellor, and also all such other matters as are by the act, or the rules and regulations made in pursuance thereof, specially referred to this court. The proceedings before the court are by way of petition, motion, or special case, with an appeal to the Lord Chancellor in matters of law or equity; or, on the refusal or admission of evidence, such appeal to be heard by the Lord Chancellor only, and not by any other judge of the Court of Chancery. The court may direct issues as to questions of fact to be tried before any judge of the court, or before a judge of assize, and a jury to be summoned under the order of the court. The costs in the Court of Review are in the discretion of the court, and are to be taxed by one of the Masters of the Court of Chancery. All attorneys and solicitors of the courts at Westminster may be admitted and enrolled in the Court of Bankruptcy without fee, and may appear and plead

sioners have the power to take the whole, or any part of the evidence in any case before them, either vivá voce on oath, or on affidavit.

Before the act 5 & 6 Vict. was passed, the plan of working bankruptcies in the country was as follows:-Ône hundred and forty separate lists of commissioners (each list consisting of two barristers and three attorneys) were appointed by the Lord Chancellor (on the nomination of the judges), to whom fiats were directed for the administration of the bankrupt law, in one hundred and thirty-two different cities and towns, in various parts of the country, exclusive of London. Country fiats are now addressed to one of the seven district courts of bankruptcy, which are established at Birmingham, Bristol, Exeter, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and Newcastle. The affairs of a bankrupt at Norwich are administered in London; a bankruptcy in the southern part of Nottinghamshire is within the jurisdiction of the Birmingham court, and if the bankrupt has lived in the northern part of the county of Nottingham, it is worked at Leeds. Each court has thus jurisdiction in a district of from forty to upwards of eighty miles in length. The Privy Council is empowered to select the seat of the courts, and to fix and alter their jurisdiction. The act limits the number of commissioners for the district

under twenty new fiats registered in the same court, after the passing of 5 & 6 Vict. c. 122, against bankrupts residing above forty miles from London, to which distance the London circuit extended, were:-solicitors' costs 441.; messengers' 107. 19s.: the totals being respectively 801. and 55l.

The number of bankruptcies gazetted in England and Wales in 1842 was 1273, and 1112 in 1843. Of this number 322 were in the metropolis, 116 in Lancashire, and 108 in the West-Riding of Yorkshire.

Scotland.-In Scotland the term bankruptcy is applied, not to the process by which an insolvent trader's available funds are collected and distributed among his creditors, but to the act of subjecting persons of any class to certain ordeals which publish to the world their inability to meet the demands against them. A person who is "notour bankrupt" in Scotland, bears a generic analogy to a person who has committed an act of bankruptcy in England, with this leading difference, that it is not a necessary characteristic of the former that he must come within the class of persons whose estates may be distributed by the process of commercial bankruptcy. In Scotland, as in England, the bankrupt, if he be within the class, is liable to the distributing process, which is there called "sequestration." It is necessary to keep in view that a "bankrupt” and a 66 seque

In the session of 1844 several petitions were presented to Parliament respecting the effect of the recent changes in the administration of the bankrupt law. The petitioners complained of the loss of time and expense occasioned by attending the district courts, the distance being sometimes eighty miles from the place where the bankrupt and the creditors lived. They also alleged that the official assignees of the district court were disqualified by want of local knowledge from managing the bankrupt's estate and effects to the best advantage: and that as dividends can only be paid by application to the district court in person, or by means of an endorsed warrant through an agent, creditors are involved in an expense which was not incurred under the previous administration of the bankrupt law. The bank-strated bankrupt" are distinct terms. rupts themselves are also obliged to Every person sequestrated is necessarily attend the district court, and to take a bankrupt, but every person who is a frequent journeys thereto at the expense bankrupt is not a person whose estate of the estate. One part of these objec- may be sequestrated. tions may be easily done away with by the establishment of several new courts, and various plans of diminishing the expenses complained of may be introduced after further experience. Thus the deputy-registrars of the Leeds District Court append a note to the return given above, in which they state that, "with a view to avoid the heavy charges of the petitioning creditor, solicitor, and others travelling a distance of from forty to seventy miles, and for their loss of time, the commissioners have determined to receive the proofs of the petitioning creditor's debt, &c., upon depositions made out of court, have called upon the solicitors to work the fiat through their agents at Leeds, and have directed the messengers, instead of themselves travelling to seize the effects of the bankrupts, to employ deputies in the nearest towns."

The criterions by which a person may become a bankrupt have been fixed by certain statutes, the earliest of which now in force is of the year 1691. Various legislative measures were passed for preventing fraudulent alienations by insolvent persons to the prejudice of creditors, and a system for the relief of insolvent debtors who are not mercantile persons was long a branch of the common law as derived from the civilians, and has lately been remodelled by statute. [CESSIO BONORUM.] It was not, however, until the year 1772 that the legislature established a process which, like the bankruptcy system in England, should collect the available assets of a bankrupt merchant into one fund, distribute it through the hands of third parties, and, under judicial supervisance among the creditors according to the proportion of the fund to their respective claims, and in the end dis

charge the bankrupt from his liabilities. | of persons coming within the 2 & 3 Vict. Since the year 1772 there has been a c. 41, are enumerated as any debtor “who succession of sequestration acts, of which is or has been a merchant, trader, manuthe latest was passed on the 17th of August, facturer, banker, broker, warehouseman, 1839 (2 & 3 Vict. c. 42). Its main features wharfinger, underwriter, artificer, packer, of distinction from the immediately pre- builder, carpenter, shipwright, innkeeper, vious act (54 Geo. III. c. 137) are these: hotel-keeper, stable-keeper, coach-conIt enlarges the class of persons who may tractor, cattle-dealer, grain-dealer, coalbe subjected to the process: instead of dealer, fish-dealer, lime-burner, printer, being a process of which every step dyer, bleacher, fuller, calenderer, and gemust be taken in the supreme court, the nerally any debtor who seeks or has sought sequestration, being awarded there, is re- his living or a material part thereof, for mitted to the sheriff's local court, where himself, or in partnership with another, the routine business proceeds under the or as agent or factor for others, by using sanction of the sheriff, who has an au- the trade of merchandise, by way of barthority bearing a general resemblance to gains, exchange, barter, commission, or that of the commissioner in England. consignment, or by buying and selling, or The winding up of the proceedings by buying and letting for hire, or by the and the taking the process out of court workmanship or manufacture of goods or require the sanction of the supreme judi- commodities:" (§ 5) unless the debtor concature. Sequestration reduces the interest sent to the sequestration, he must have which will qualify a creditor to sue for been bankrupt, or must have been sixty the application of the act, and abbreviates days in sanctuary within the space of a the proceedings. year, and must have transacted business in Scotland, and must within the preceding year have resided or had a dwelling house in Scotland. The estates of a deceased debtor may under certain restrictions be sequestrated though he was not bankrupt and did not come within the above classification.

How a man becomes bankrupt.—A person who is insolvent is made notour bankrupt, by being imprisoned either according to the old form of horning and caption, or in terms of the 1 & 2 Vict. c. 114, or by such writ of imprisonment having been issued against him, which he seeks to defeat by taking sanctuary Application and awarding. The appliwithin the precincts of the Palace of cation for sequestration is by petition to Holyroodhouse, fleeing, absconding, or the court of session. It may be either forcibly defending his person. If the by the debtor with concurrence of creindividual be not liable to imprison- ditors, or by the latter. The persons who ment, from his residing in the sanc may petition or concur are-any one cretuary, being abroad, having privilege of ditor to the extent of 50l.; any two to parliament, &c., the execution against the extent of 70%.; and any three or more him of the charge which precedes the to the extent of 100l. Where the petiwarrant of imprisonment, if accompanied tion is with the debtor's consent, sequesby an arrestment of his goods not loosed tration is immediately awarded.. Where within fifteen days, or by a poinding of it is required solely at the instance of the his moveable goods, or by an adjudication creditors, measures are taken for citing of his real property, will make him bank- those concerned, and for procuring evirupt. A person whose estate is seques-dence of the statements on which the petrated, if not previously bankrupt, becomes so from the date of the first judicial deliverance in the sequestration. The principal effect of bankruptcy, is to strike at alienations to creditors within sixty days before it, and to equalize attachments against the estate taken within sixty days before and four months after it.

Who may be sequestrated.—The classes

tition proceeds. When sequestration is awarded, the deliverance remits the process to the sheriff of the county, and appoints the times and place of certain meetings for arranging the management of the estate. In all questions under the act, the sequestration is held to commence with the date of the first judicial deliverance to whatever effect, on the application;