Black List.

Black List. Such is the name familiarly applied to printed lists connected with insolvency, bankruptcy, and other matters affecting the credit of firms and individuals, which are circulated for the private guidance of the mercantile community. These lists are for the most part published in London weekly; but some are bi-weekly. In their contents are embraced the English bankruptcies and liquidations by arrangement under the Act of 1882; the bankruptcies of Scotland and Ireland; Scottish registers of protested bills; decrees in absence; judgments for debt in the Irish courts; offers of composition; dissolutions of partnership; warrants of attorney and cognovits; judges' orders; bills of sale, &c. The legality of issuing information of this kind has been challenged, even when not freely sold, but limited to regular subscribers, on the ground that it amounts to a slander of the credit of the merchant whose name is given. In the case of the Scottish Mercantile Society's Record in 1848, it was found by the House of Lords that 'such publication' was not slanderous. In point of fact, the lists are only extracts from public registers, as are the ordinary lists of bankruptcies in the newspapers. The idea of furnishing to subscribers private lists of a more searching kind is due to Mr Thomas Perry of Cornhill, the proprietor of the 'Original Bankrupt and Insolvent Registry Office, for Protection against Fraud, Swindlers,' &c.; and similar lists are prepared by the Scottish Trade Protection Society, Edinburgh. Stubbs' is the best known publication of this kind. In the United States, the vast system of the mercantile agency and other similar institutions provides information of this kind; and printed lists of forgeries of bank-notes are issued. In one of these Counterfeit Detectors may be counted some thousands of varieties of forged bank-notes in circulation.