1832.] Abolition of Imprisonment for Debt. 443 



wife seeks a living how she can. God knows the difficulties a poor but 

 virtuous female may encounter to procure bread under such circum- 

 stances. If she be indifferent to her fate, alas ! for the sympathies of 

 humanity. The helpless children, however, must be fed and clothed 

 by the parish ; they are virtually imprisoned, and the badge of disgrace 

 is cast upon them for their parents' misfortune. Here then is a new 

 burthen, but it may go even beyond this. 



By such disgrace, and the misery consequent on imprisonment, you not 

 only reduce men to poverty, but to demoralization and despair ; they 

 either become a burthen to the community, or are driven necessarily to 

 the commission of crime, which puts the country to a worse and wasteful 

 expense of prosecuting the victim of its own rearing. 



Prisons, we allow, must exist for the protection of the just, and work- 

 houses for the relief of the wretched poor ; though both are necessary, 

 at best they are evils ; but let a politic legislature prevent as far as pos- 

 sible these scenes of depravity and degradation from becoming our 

 schools of education. 



We would allow a creditor to pursue the object of vengeance, and to 

 take from him what is not his own make his whole effects liable now 

 and available for ever pursue him to execution to destitution, but 

 stop there ; imprison not the body infringe not upon the individual 

 right of freedom confound not guilt with misfortune, a distinction 

 which should be carefully observed punishment should be propor- 

 tionate to the offence. 



You only imprison the felon, you feed and clothe him ; you imprison 

 too the useful labourer, honest, moral, and industrious though he be ; 

 you deprive him of his means of subsistence. It matters not whether 

 the person indulging in this barbarous but legal tyranny be an honest 

 man or a rogue ; he and his family perhaps are luxuriating upon credit ; 

 and this is not a rare case ; he is a man of straw, one who intends from 

 the beginning of his career to defraud his creditors, sufficiently confi- 

 dent to ask, and wicked enough to take effects on credit, with the sole 

 view of appropriating them to his profligate uses ; yet even this man, 

 not liable himself to suffer imprisonment, is intrusted with the scales 

 and sword of Justice. Interested and vindictive, he is made the judge 

 and avenger in his own cause ; he has the power to imprison the guilt- 

 less and useful member of society, for offending, however slightly, 

 against his borrowed and temporary lustre. Monstrous ! but to crown 

 this absurdity, the law robs Justice of her chief attribute, and permits 

 Oppression with a partial eye to select his victim. 



To allow imprisonment for an original debt for which the creditor 

 gave a substantial consideration, is undoubtedly injurious to all parties ; 

 but it is the height of impolicy and folly to permit attorneys and bailiffs 

 for costs, to paralyze the efforts of able and useful men, and to reduce 

 very numerous families to destitution and infamy. 



These results too, incredible though they appear, more frequently 

 happen in actions for costs than upon original debts, the imprisonment or 

 detention not arising in the wish or vindictive pertinacity of the creditor, 

 but in the callousness of low officers, familiar with this business. Nor 

 should it be here forgotten, that the instances are not few in which the 

 original creditor himself becomes the twofold sufferer, first by losing his 

 debt, and secondly by incarceration for being unable to pay the enor- 



