ution thereupon became binding
upon all the creditors, without any act of approval by the court, any
judicial examination of the debtor, or any official supervision over the
trustee's accounts. The debtor was not permitted to present a bankruptcy
petition against himself, and consequently his only method of procedure was
that which thus removed the matter from the supervision and control of the
court, and as about nine-tenths of all the proceedings under the act of
1869 were initiated by debtors, it followed that only about one-tenth was
submitted to proper investigation. It is true that the creditors might
refuse to assent to the debtor's proposal, and that any creditor for L50 or
upwards could present a petition in bankruptcy, but even where this course
was adopted, the proceedings under the petition were, as a rule, stayed by
the court if the debtor subsequently presented a proposal for liquidation
or composition, and the creditor was left to pay the expenses of his
petition if the requisite majority voted for the debtor's proposal. So far,
therefore, as the act was concerned, every inducement was held out to the
adoption of a course which took the examination of the debtor, the
conditions of his discharge and the audit of the trustee's accounts, out of
the control of the court.

[Sidenote: Causes of failures of Acts.]

The establishment of a bankruptcy court, with its searching powers of
investigation and its power of enforcing penalties on misconduct, can only
be defended on the ground that the administration of justice is a matter
affecting the interests of the community at large. But apart from the
injury done to these interests by reducing the administration of justice to
a question of barter and arrangement between the individuals immediately
concerned, one of the chief reasons why the acts of 1849, 1861 and 1869
proved failures, lies in the obvious fact that the creditors of a
particular estate are not, as appears to have been assumed, a homogeneous
or organized body capable of acting together in the administration of a
bankrupt estate. In the case of a few special and highly organized trades
it may be otherwise, but in the great majority of cases the creditors have
but little knowledge of each other or means of organized action, while they
have neither the time nor the inclination to investigate the complicated
questions which frequently arise, and which are therefore left in the hands
of professional trustee