he bankrupt were well-known, who would know how to reconcile
the interests of the whole body of creditors with those of a man
honorably overtaken by misfortune. For some years past the best judges
have sought the advice of the solicitors in this matter for the purpose
of not taking it, endeavoring to appoint some other agent _quasi_
virtuous.

During this act of the drama the creditors, real or pretended, come
forward to select the provisional assignees, who are often, as we have
said, the final ones. In this electoral assembly all creditors have the
right to vote, whether the sum owing to them is fifty sous, or fifty
thousand francs. This assembly, in which are found pretended creditors
introduced by the bankrupt,--the only electors who never fail to come
to the meeting,--proposes the whole body of creditors as candidates from
among whom the commissioner, a president without power, is supposed
to select the assignees. Thus it happens that the judge almost always
appoints as assignees those creditors whom it suits the bankrupt to
have,--another abuse which makes the catastrophe of bankruptcy one
of the most burlesque dramas to which justice ever lent her name.
The honorable bankrupt overtaken by misfortune is then master of the
situation, and proceeds to legalize the theft he premeditated. As a
rule, the petty trades of Paris are guiltless in this respect. When
a shopkeeper gets as far as making an assignment, the worthy man has
usually sold his wife's shawl, pawned his plate, left no stone unturned,
and succumbs at last with empty hands, ruined, and without enough money
to pay his attorney, who in consequence cares little for him.

The law requires that the _concordat_, at which is granted the
bankrupt's certificate that remits to the merchant a portion of his
debt, and restores to him the right of managing his affairs, shall
be attended by a majority of the creditors, and also that they shall
represent a certain proportion of the debt. This important action brings
out much clever diplomacy, on the part of the bankrupt, his assignees,
and his solicitor, among the contending interests which cross and
jostle each other. A usual and very common manoeuvre is to offer to that
section of the creditors who make up in number and amount the majority
required by law certain premiums, which the debtor consents to pay over
and above the dividend publicly agreed upon. This monstrous fraud is
without remedy. The thirty commercial c