124 Debtors. [ Auc- 
real value is fluctuating with every change of the market. If it be just 
to imprison for twenty pounds, it is so for twenty pence. ‘To one man 
twenty pence is as important as twenty pounds to another—all is rela- 
tive. Yet, obvious as this is, ten pounds was—we know not how long— 
long enough to allow of great fluctuations in value—the minimum of 
arrest. That minimum was, some years ago, extended to fifteen pounds, 
‘under the pretence of augmented nominal prices, when, for that very 
reason, at that very time, thirty, or even forty pounds would have 
been nearer the mark. What justice or equity is this that arrests one 
man for fifteen pounds, and protects another, because the amount of 
debt is less by a shilling or two, though the injury done by the protected 
case be probably the greater? What saving virtue is there in this redeem- 
ing shilling or two? Inequalities like these are mockeries. Adhere to the 
letter of the law, and the debtor who owes fifteen pounds has hard 
measure meted to him, when he sees another escape, who is less guilty 
by a shilling or two; and the creditor equally so—particularly the. 
creditor whose dealings are with small customers, who take care not to 
swell their debts to the prison-point, or whose petty circumstances. 
necessarily keep them below it. 
But of what use after all is this nominal limitation of which we 
are so apt to boast too—when the law allows of law-expenses going into 
the minimum—when it allows of law-expenses beginning at any point, 
so that a debt of any amount, however small, may, by process, be 
quickly brought up to the arrestable sum? Better far allow of arrest 
for the origmal debt, were it but a shilling, than studiously legislate to 
put money in the pockets of the lawyers, and make a bad case worse- 
What privilege and protection is this? Admit the principle of arrest, 
and imprison for debt without limitation, and let the law take its course 
forthwith ; then, if a man owerfive pounds, and be unable to pay, it is 
better surely for him to be arrested for that sum than be subjected to the 
glorious privilege of being harassed by successive and expensive pro- 
cesses, till the miserable five be tripled to fifteen, and then be impri- 
soned. It will not be disputed, we suppose, that five pounds are 
sooner paid than fifteen—fifteen did we say? the current of expense 
stops not there. He must pay for the final writ, four or five pounds 
more, out of which we know not how many persons must have a 
fingering ; he must satisfy the bailiff, whose conscience—such is his 
« dreadful trade’—is of course of a good stretching quality, and not only 
him, but his follower, who is no bashful imitator of his master; and 
not only these things, but he will have to pay, on his personal peril, 
fee upon fee on his entrance into prison—the gaoler and his deputies 
must live, and his fellow prisoners must regale to welcome his arrival, 
and all at his cost ;—and not only this again, but he will have to purchase 
the common necessaries of life at exorbitant prices—mixed up all the 
while with the miserable, the degraded, the depraved—thrown out 
of his usual career of gaining his livelihood, of acquiring the means 
which would best enable him to discharge the original claim,—growing 
worse and worse every day, not only by this deprivation, but by 
extraordinary expenditure,—demoralizing rapidly by his forced associa- 
tions with those, whom the tyranny of creditors is fitting fast for desperate 
wickedness ; and finally, in addition to these oppressions, when by some 
lucky or legal chance he re-enters the world, he finds himself shunned 
and suspected, his wife and children beggars or paupers, cut off from 
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