Se aa 
1826. ] Debtors. 129 
officers—each one, in short, buys of his superior ; and the luckless, the 
oppressed, the afllicted debtor, must be pay-all of the whole devouring 
series. Turn we to the debtor-gaols—to the Fleet—to the King’s 
Bench: the emoluments, considerable as they are—in the Fleet, 
£3,000 or £4,000 a-year are plucked from them by fees, and as much, 
or more at the Bench—all are torn from the pockets of the exhausted 
debtor. 
The truth is, the public, generally, know little or nothing of the real 
condition’ of the debtor, and of the oppressions to which he is subject— 
he is out of sight; if they did, we have too high an opinion of the hu- 
manity, if not of the justice of our countrymen, to believe that such 
enormities could survive another session—even of an unreformed Parlia- 
ment. ‘That Parliament has had committees, time after time, sitting, 
and reports of all the London prisons have been made, over and over 
again ; all the iniquities, at least the principal, have been exhibited by 
willing and unwilling witnesses ; but what has been the result ? Nothing. 
The examinations are carefully recorded, regularly printed, duly pre- 
sented, and habitually shelved—that is all. The evil is beyond their 
management, because they have never attempted any thing but al- 
leviations and palliatives, partial remedies and petty reforms; they 
will not—they seem as if they dare not look to the principle, the origin, 
the object—dare not compare the result with the purpose—the end with 
the means; if they did, they would see that nothing short of a complete- 
extirpation of the system would be productive of any real benefit; and, 
common humanity once roused within them, and once in activity, would 
impel them, with indignation and disgust, to sweep the debtor-laws from 
the statute-books. _. 
Alarming as may seem to some this doctrine of ours, we have a firm 
conviction, that it would be productive of some of the happiest results 
that ever followed legislative measure, upon the domestic comforts of 
the nation. For what would follow this abolition of the law of arrest 
and imprisonment for debt? The stoppage of the credit system. And 
upon what source can you lay your finger and say, Here is a cause 
equally prolific of evil with this credit system? We defy the world to 
do it. How operates this precious sytem? Generally—we cannot now 
particularize—that people of all classes run into excesses—that money 
is spent before it is earned or received; that the income of next year is 
consumed this, instead of the income of last—that no reserves are thus 
made for contingencies, and when contingencies actually fall, they are 
without resources to meet them. Every class of life, from the capital 
to the base of society, injures and is injured; they prey and are preyed 
upon. They are driven to oblique courses, to shuffle, and contrive, and 
évade—to mortgage, to raise loans on disadvantageous and disgraceful 
pe a They are tempted by the facilities of credit, to purchase not 
vhat they can pay for, but what they can get credit for; not what they 
necessarily want, but what they ambitiously desire ; not what once suited 
their proper station, but what their immediate superiors must have. The 
son sports, the wife dresses, the table sparkles with the wines of the 
South, and groans with the luxuries of the East and the West ; servants 
swallow them up, and stewards lend what was once their own. Descend- 
mg to the lines below, the scene scarcely varies; the professional man, 
the trader, the agent, all avail themselves of the same facilities; < fly 
their kites,’ and live beyond their actual and solid means, till we reach 
M.M. New Series.—Vot. II. No. 8. s 
