THE BANKRUPTCY ACT 1883. WITH INTRODUCTION, INDEX AND BRIEF NOTES. BY M. D. CHALMERS, M.A., BARRISTER-AT-LAW, EDITOR OF THE BILLS OF EXCHANGE ACT, 1882, ETC., PREFACE. Τ IT should be noted that ss. 66, 127 to 129, 153, 162 and 170, come into operation on the passing of the Act. The rest of its provisions come into operation on the 1st of January next. Sect. 162 relates to the collection of unclaimed dividends, and s. 170 restricts compositions and liquidations under the Act of 1869. Until the rules and forms prescribed by the Act are issued, an edition of it containing anything like a critical examination of its provisions would be useless, if not misleading. When the rules and forms are published, we hope to bring out an edition comprising the Act with notes, the rules and forms, and such Board of Trade orders and circulars as may be of use to the public, or those engaged professionally in bankruptcy administration. In the mean time a reprint of the Act, in a handy form, with an explanatory introduction, index, and references to the Act of 1869, may be of some use to those who are anxious at once to make themselves acquainted with the more salient features of the new measure. M. D. C. 11, NEW COURT, LINCOLN'S INN, W.C. INTRODUCTION. 1. The Bill, which has now become the Bankruptcy The Act. Act, 1883, was introduced by the President of the Board of Trade (the Right. Hon. J. Chamberlain), in February last. It was read a second time in the House of Commons on the 19th of March, and was the first measure referred to the new Standing Committee on Trade. The Grand Committee held nineteen sittings to consider the Bill, and reported it to the House with numerous amendments. The House accepted the measure as it came from the hands of the Committee, and it passed through the stages of report and third reading without a single division. It was introduced in the Lords on the 17th of August, and various amendments in matters of detail were there inserted. The Bill received the Royal Assent on the 25th of August. bankruptcy 2. "Every good bankruptcy law," said Mr. Chamber- Principles of lain, on moving the second reading of the Bill," must legislation. have in view two main, and at the same time, distinct objects. Those objects were, first, the honest administration of bankrupt estates, with a view to the fair and speedy distribution of the assets among the creditors whose property they were; and, secondly, following the idea that prevention is better than cure, to do something to improve the general tone of commercial morality, to promote honest trading, and to lessen the number of failures. In other words, Parliament had to endeavour, as far as possible, to protect the salvage |