and must be filed so that the debtor has access to them, if he wants to know their contents, in applying for his discharge. A person summoned under the section must have his travelling expenses paid, otherwise he cannot be committed if he fails to attend, but this does not include allowance for loss of time (Re Batson, Ex parte Hastie, 1894, 1 Mans. 45), or costs of employing solicitor or counsel (In re Lutscher, 1887, 6 Ch. D. 328). A witness too ill to attend may be examined before an officer of the Court at his own residence (Re Bradbrook, 1889, 6 Morr. 188). It is a matter for the discretion of the Court what questions it will allow to be put (Re Tillett, Ex parte Harper, 1890, 7 Morr. 286). The answers of a witness are evidence against him, but not against other examinees. The power of examination must not be used for a collateral purpose. This has not unfrequently been attempted by a contributory under the analogous section (sec. 115 of the Companies Act) in winding-up, to get information in an action which he is bringing. But it is an abuse, and for this reason, that the statutory examination in both bankruptcy and winding-up is of a much more searching and inquisitorial character than the ordinary discovery permitted in an action. Besides giving discovery of his property, the bankrupt is bound to assist the trustee to the best of his ability in the realisation of his property. The question arose in Re Betts & Block, 1887, 19 Q. B. D. 39; affirmed 13 App. Cas. 576, whether under this section the bankrupt was bound to submit himself to medical examination for the purpose of enabling the trustee to realise the bankrupt's life interest to greater advantage, by effecting an insurance on the bankrupt's life. The Court held (Fry, L.J., dissenting) that the bankrupt was not bound. RELATION BACK OF THE TRUSTEE'S TITLE.-When once a debtor's insolvency is established, and it is clear that his estate must be distributed among his creditors, it is desirable that the earliest date at which the insolvency disclosed itself should be adopted as the date for distribution. This is the principle that underlies the doctrine of the relation back of the trustee's title-a doctrine which has been recognised, with trifling variations, by all the Bankruptcy Acts, from 13 Eliz. c. 7 till to-day. Some limit must, however, be fixed to the doctrine; otherwise it would be too indefinite and unpractical. The Act of 1869 fixed it at the first act of bankruptcy, within six months of the petition; the present Act at the first act of bankruptcy, within three months (B. A. s. 43). The result of this is greatly to the benefit of creditors, inasmuch as it avoids a number of dispositions of property which a hard driven debtor is tempted to make when he finds himself on the brink of the gulf of commercial insolvency. The general rule on the subject may be stated thus: the trustee is entitled under the relation-back doctrine to recover all moneys paid by the debtor to anyone with notice of the act of bankruptcy to which the trustee's title relates back. One of the leading cases on the subject is In re Pollitt, [1893] 1 Q. B. 455. In that case a debtor asked a solicitor, to whom he already owed £40 for costs, to prepare for him a deed of assignment for the benefit of his creditors. The solicitor said: "I cannot work any more for you on credit. I must be paid beforehand; you must give me a sum sufficient to cover the costs of any work which I may undertake for you." The debtor, accordingly, gave the solicitor £15, and he prepared a deed of assignment at a cost of £2, 17s. 8d., and the deed was executed by the debtor. The execution of such a deed constituted, as the solicitor knew, an act of bankruptcy by the debtor, and the debtor was in fact afterwards adjudicated a bankrupt in respect of it, and the title of the trustee related back to it. "What does that mean?" says Lord Esher, and he goes on to explain: "The result of the relation back is that all subsequent dealings with the debtor's property must be treated as if bankruptcy had taken place at the moment when the act of bankruptcy was committed. The debtor must be considered as having become a bankrupt the moment the deed was executed. Then, he being a bankrupt, all the money which he then had, and all the money which was owing to him, passed to the trustee in the bankruptcy, for the purpose of being distributed by him amongst the bankrupt's creditors. At that very moment the solicitor could not do any work for the bankrupt, so as to take away from the trustee the money which was then due to the bankrupt, for the act of bankruptcy put an end to the solicitor's authority to do work for the bankrupt, as against the money which he then had in hand." In re Spackman, Ex parte Foley, 1890, 24 Q. B. D. 728; Ward v. Fry, 1901, 50 W. R. 72; and Re Drucker, Ex parte Basden (No. 1), [1902] 2 K. B. 237, are other illustrations of the working of the principle. There is, however, in such cases one exception. Money paid by a debtor to his solicitor, to defray counsel's fees, and other legal expenses, in opposing proceedings in bankruptcy, that have been commenced against the debtor (In re Sinclair, Ex parte Payne, 1884, 15 Q. B. D. 616), or to defend the debtor on a charge of murder (Re Charlwood, Ex parte Masters, 1895, 1 Mans. 42), cannot be recovered from the solicitor by the trustee in the debtor's subsequent bankruptcy, though at the time of receiving the money the solicitor knew of the act of bankruptcy. This exception is grounded on humanity. If such payments had to be refunded, a debtor would be left defenceless, because nobody would act for him; but these cases are not to be extended (Re Spackman, Ex parte May, 1890, 7 Morr. 100; Re Simonson, Ex parte Ball, 1895, 1 Mans. 30). The doctrine of relation back does not affect the Crown (In re Bonham, 1878, 10 Ch. D. 595; B. A. s. 150). EXECUTIONS, ATTACHMENT OF DEBTS, ETC.-A person becoming bankrupt gives rise, as we might naturally expect, to many competing claims between the general body of his creditors and particular creditors or purchasers. For instance, a judgment creditor seizes goods pending a petition on which the judgment debtor is made a bankrupt: To which ought the goods seized to belong? Or the judgment creditor attaches a debt owing to his debtor: To whom ought the debt to be paid? These are nice questions of legal casuistry. In the Bankruptcy Act, 1883, s. 45, the legislature has laid down certain criteria for the determination of such questions, embodying and harmonising the result of numerous decisions. The substance of this section is that a creditor who has levied execution or attached debts is not entitled to retain the benefit of his execution or attachment unless he has completed it before the date of the receiving order, and without notice of a bankruptcy petition, or any available act of bankruptcy (Re Ford, 1900, 7 Mans. 14). Completion, in the case of an execution against goods, means seizure and sale; in case of attachment of debts, receipt of the debt; and in case of execution against land, seizure; or, where the interest is equitable, the appointment of a receiver. A sale by the sheriff, though by private contract, gives the execution creditor a good title (Crawshay v. Harrison, [1894] 1 Q. B. 79). If, before sale of the goods or completion of an execution for less than £20, notice is served on the sheriff that a receiving order has been made against the debtor, the sheriff is to deliver the goods to the official receiver (B. A., 1890, s. 11 (1)). If the execution is for more than £20, the sheriff is to retain the proceeds of sale for a period of fourteen days before he delivers them over to the execution creditor, and if within those fourteen days the sheriff has notice of a receiving order having been made against the debtor, he is to hand over the proceeds of the execution to the official receiver, if so required by him (Re Dawson, Ex parte Dawson, 1899, 6 Mans. 200), so that they may go into the common fund for the benefit of creditors generally-the rationale of this suspension being, of course, that an execution levied for a sum of more than £20 is a strong symptom of insolvency, and a frequent prelude to bankruptcy. As to execution against property of a firm, see Dibb v. Brook, 1895, 1 Mans. 245. The notice to the sheriff need not be in writing (Curtis v. Wainbrook Iron Co., 1884, C. & E. 351). AVOIDANCE OF VOLUNTARY SETTLEMENTS.-One of the principal ends of bankruptcy law is to prevent an insolvent debtor putting his property beyond the reach of his creditors by means of a voluntary or fraudulent settlement. The well-known Statute of Elizabeth (13 Eliz. c. 5) is an early, though by no means the earliest, attempt of the legislature to cope with these devices of debtors. That statute declared utterly void all feoffments, gifts, grants, alienations, conveyances, etc., of land, tenements, hereditaments, goods, or chattels, covinously made to delay, hinder, or defraud creditors, but this avoidance was not to extend to any feoffment, gift, etc., on good consideration and bona fide conveyed to any person not having notice of the covin (see FRAUDULENT CONVEYANCES). Beneficial as this time-honoured statute has been, and is, it was insufficient to meet the exigencies of the situation, where bankruptcy was concerned; because, however fraudulent the settlor's intent, the conveyance is valid if the purchaser is free from fraud. The whole of a debtor's property may therefore be assigned for a past debt without the transaction being impeachable under the statute. To supplement this and other deficiencies, secs. 47, 48 have been inserted in the present Bankruptcy Act. The short result of sec. 47 is that, if a person makes a voluntary post-nuptial settlement of his property, and becomes bankrupt within two years of doing so, the settlement is void against his creditors; and if the settlor becomes bankrupt within even ten years of the settlement, he must be prepared to show that he was solvent when he made it, without the aid of the property comprised in the settlement. This avoidance does not, however, apply to a settlement made before, and in consideration of, marriage, or in favour of a purchaser or incumbrancer in good faith and for valuable consideration, or to a settlement made on the wife and children of the settlor, of property which has accrued to the settlor after marriage in right of his wife. A post-nuptial settlement reciting a parole ante-nuptial agreement may be good against the creditors (Re Holland; Gregg v. Holland, 1902, 9 Mans. 259). All the circumstances must be looked at (ibid.). But even marriage-the highest kind of consideration, as it has been called-will fail to support a settlement, if the celebration of the marriage is only part of a concerted scheme to protect the settled property against the rights of creditors of the settlor, as where a man married a woman with whom he had been cohabiting seven years, for B. 79). sthan made Official 0. the days ithin ving the Ex non Sus an k ok, ng ls t the purpose, as she knew, of defeating creditors (Columbine v. Penhall, and this life interest is made defeasible on bankruptcy. In such a a A difficulty has occurred in some of the cases in saying what is " The settlement, when avoided, is not made void ab initio, but only Π settlement will therefore acquire a good title as against the trustee (Re Brall, Ex parte Norton, 1893, 10 Morr. 166; Re Carter & Kenterdine, 1897, 4 Mans. 33; Re Vansittart, Ex parte Brown (No. 2), 1893, 10 Morr. 44). On this principle the trustees of the settlement are entitled to a lien on the settled property for the costs, charges, and expenses up to the time of avoidance (Re Holden, 1887, 20 Q. B. D. 43; Merry v. Pownall, [1898] 1 Ch. 306). It is a corollary from the same principle that the settlement is only avoided to the extent necessary for satisfying the claims of creditors in the bankruptcy (Sanginetti v. Stuckey's Banking Coy., [1895] 1 Ch. 176; Re Sims, Ex parte Sheffield, 1896, 3 Mans. 340; Re Parry, Ex parte Salaman, [1904] 1 K. B. 129). As to the construction of (2) of sec. 47, see Re Knight, Ex parte Cooper, 1885, 2 Morr. 223; Re Reis, Ex parte Clough, 1904, 11 Mans. 229. FRAUDULENT PREFERENCE.-At common law there is nothing to prevent a debtor preferring one creditor to another, and the Statute of Elizabeth (13 Eliz. c. 5) leaves this common-law privilege unaffected. It is obviously, however, opposed to the fundamental principle of bankruptcy law-the equitable distribution of assets among all entitled to share. As soon as it becomes plain to an insolvent debtor that there must be a judicial administration of his estate, in due course of law, it is dishonesty on his part to do anything to put one creditor in a better position than another. This principle, which founds the law as to fraudulent preference, was first formulated in sec. 92 of the Bankruptcy Act, 1869, and is now reproduced, with some slight variations, in sec. 48 of the present Act, 1883. The period during which any payment, transfer, etc., by way of fraudulent preference, is made impeachable, is three months before presentation of a petition on which the debtor is adjudicated a bankrupt. The elements which go to make up a fraudulent preference are two— First, insolvency-inability, that is to say, on the debtor's part to pay his debts as they become due, from his own moneys; and, secondly, a view of giving the creditor in question a preference over the other creditors. It was at one time held that a view meant the sole view, but it is now settled that it is sufficient if the debtor's view in preferring is the "substantial, effectual, or dominant view" (In re Bird, 1883, 23 Ch. D. 695). It is none the less so that there is an ulterior motive on the debtor's part as well, e.g. to get the preferred creditor's patronage in the future. Preferring is, as the word implies, a voluntary act; and it was formerly held as a corollary from that, that if there was pressure by the creditor the payment was not the voluntary act of the debtor. But pressure will not now be held necessarily to negative a view on the debtor's part to prefer, because to a man on the verge of bankruptcy, pressure is indifferent (In re Cooper, 1882, 19 Ch. D. 580). The person interested in upholding the payment must go further, and show that the avoidance of that pressure was the dominant motive of the debtor in making the payment (In re Bell, 1893, 10 Morr. 15; Re Walker, Ex parte Topham, 1873, L. R. 8 Ch. 614; Smith v. Pilgrim, 1876, 2 Ch. D. 127; Tomkins v. Saffery, 1877, 3 App. Cas. 213). Hence if a debtor conveys property to repair a breach of trust with a view of shielding himself from the consequences of such breach of trust, this is not a fraudulent preference (Sharp v. Jackson, 1899, 6 Mans. 264, affirming New's Trustee v. Hunting, 1897, 4 Mans. 103; and see Re Lake, Ex parte Dyer, 1901, 8 Mans. 145). Nor is a payment made to a creditor with the dominant motive of |