Supplementary Paper on Bankruptcy and Insolvency. London, 1841.
[Bankruptcy]. [Great Britain]. Law, William John [1786-1869]. Supplementary Paper on Bankruptcy and Insolvency. By William John Law, Esq. Dissentient from the Report. Presented to Both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty. London: Printed by W. Clowes and Sons for Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1841. 108 pp. Folio (13-1/2" x 8-3/4"; 34 x 22 cm). Original printed blue wrappers, edges untrimmed. Moderate soiling and edgewear to wrappers, spine largely abraded. Moderate toning to interior, occasional sparse light foxing, light soiling in a few places, clean tear to top-edge of leaves I2-4 (pp. 67-72) affecting a few lines of text without loss to legibility. $150. * Bankruptcy reform was an important (and perennial) topic in British politics, and a number of parliamentary committees were established to examine the issue in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This paper was written in dissent from an 1841 report that recommended further steps towards the abolition of imprisonment for debt, such as the end of arrest before a bankruptcy suit had concluded. Law, a barrister and one of the comissioners of bankruptcy, "argued that arrest had a chilling effect on reckless indebtedness, and this outweighed any cost of the system" (Lester). Lester, Victorian Insolvency 114n.
Price: $150.00
Book number 85280