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, and which are circulated for the private guidance of the mercantile community. These lists, which serve an important purpose, are well known by commercial men in the United Kingdom. For the most part they tire published in London weekly; but some are biweekly. In their contents are embraced the English bankruptcies and liquidations by arrangement under the act of 1870; 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' milers; bills of sale, etc. The legality of issuing information of this kind has been challenged, but it has been determinad that it is quite lawful. In point of fact, the lists
are only extracts from public registers, as are the ordinary lists of bankruptcies in the newspapers. Private lists of a more searching kind are furnished to subscribers by Mr. Thomas Perry of Cornhill, the proprietor of the "original bankrupt and insolvent registry office, for protection against fraud, swindlers," etc.; and also by the Scottish trade protection society, Edinburgh. See TRADE PROTECTION SOCIETIES. In the United States, printed lists of forgeries of bank-notes are similarly issued. In one of these counteifeit detectors—which is certainly black, enough—may be counted some thou sands of varieties of forged bank-notes in circulation; the whole revealing a frightful state of commercial and moral depravity.