The Swansea Chamber of Commerce did honour to Mr. - Chamberlain
yesterday week, when Mr. Chamberlain made a speech chiefly concerning the forthcoming Bankruptcy Bill, in which he did not spare the Bill introduced by the Associated Chamber of Commerce last Session, which it had been, he told them, his unfortunate duty to oppose. The truth is, that the Associated Chambers of Commerce had failed to embody in their Bill the most important of the objects which they had themselves previously laid down. Mr. Chamberlain's chief object is, he told Swansea, to make bankruptcy less easy and pleasant a process. Some one had said that under our present law no man in difficulties, with a proper regard to the interests -of his family,. should ever think of paying 20s. in the pound. Mr. Chamberlain wishes to blunt the edge of this sarcasm. He intends to have an impartial and judicial inquiry,—to treat in- solvency much as you treat the loss of a ship, and brand any bankruptcy or insolvency which is, after impartial inquiry, judged to be due to fraud or culpable carelessness, as you would brand the loss of a ship through the connivance or through the -culpable carelessness of its captain,—to affix a stigma to it that will stick. This is an object perfectly within reach, and doubtless, if adequately attained, it would do more to bring actual disgrace on disgraceful insolvency, and therefore to render it less common, than all other provisions whatever.
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