The Sun.
London, England, 1837-03-03 00:00:00

enables a great many traders, shopkeepers, and others
to get rid of their goods, but does it enable them to
get the payment ?—that is the question. We do not
know what advantage it is to the linen-draper, the
hatter, the hosier, the baker, the butcher, to have
their shelves cleared of their respective commodities,
by ready-handed customers, unless in return they get
their tills filled. The law of imprisonment for debt
enables them to have the former operation very effectu-
ally performed, but not the latter. Thus the clearing out
part of the commercial transaction is admirably accom-
plished by the law of imprisonment for debt, but not t)ee,
paying in. So much for the protection to the crdior.
Now let us look at the case of the debtrieeitherho-
nest or dishonest. if honest, he may be still weak enough
to avail himself of the dangerous facility of credit which
the law produces, and plunge into expenses without
present means of paying, which he hopes hereafter he
will be able to satisfy. If dishonest, he will not
scruple to take all he can get for nothing, making pro-
mises of payments which he never intends to fulfil.
Misfortune lays his hand upon the former, and the
bailiff follows misfortune. He is thrown into prison
because he has not the means of honestly paying his
debts, and a prison is the worst place in the world to
acquire those means. He is prevented from earning
the daily bread of his family, who are reduced to ruin
along with him ; and so, though the creditor's demand
is not paid, his.vindictive feelings, if he possess any,
are amply gratified. But the law, while it enforces
justice as far as it is practicable, should not minister
to revenge. In the mean time, he who went into
prison an honest though unfortunate debtor, too
often comes out depraved by the moral contami-
nation of a gaol. Having received the treatment
of a criminal, he is resolved to justify its se-
verity, and to plunder society before he is again
consigned to the punishment of the thief. Our
prisons are not remarkable for converting rogues
into honest men ; but many an honest man they
have made a rogue. In this way the legislation works
for the benefit of creditor and debtor, which Mr.
Richards so much admires. Even our criminal law,
which the Attorney-General once told his consti-
tuents at Edinburgh is still the most barbarous and
bloody of any in Europe, is provided with a large pro-
portion of those victims that perish on its scaffold by
the law of imprisonment for debt. Mr. Richards de-
scribes the proceedings in the Insolvent Court as
something like a farce, producing on the whole to cre-
ditors about three farthings in the pound, and he says
that debtors can get through that Court and become
free men again, after suffering about two months' im-
prisonment. Is not this, we ask, a strong argument
against the side of the question which he advocates—
in his speech, we mean, not by his vote? If impri-
sonment for debt at present is only a state of probation
to a speedy discharge through the Insolvent Court, is
not that another reason why such a mockery of protec-
tion to the creditor should be abolished ? It is, in-
deed, a very strong argument for abolishing imprison-
ment for debt altogether, unless Mr. Richards be pre-
pared to revive the law of imprisonment for debt in
all its unmitigated severity, before either the " Lords'
Act" passed or the Insolvent Court was established.
Would Mr. Richards dare to make such a proposition ?
Would any man in Parliament dare to do it ? Again,
as to the three farthings sterling squeezed out of
debtors at present in passing through the Insolvent
Court, what does that prove ? Does it not prove either
the great poverty of the persons in general imprisoned
by the law, or that the law, as it stands, is not effec-
tual to reach their property ? If the former, why should
they be imprisoned at all ? If the latter, why should
not the law be altered ? We offer Mr. Richards the
choice of either horn of this dilemma. Perhaps he
will speak for the one, and vote for the other. Mr.
Richards speaks of the antiquity of the law of impri-
sonment fur debt, as if it were coeval with our Consti-
tution—but the ancient common law of this country
knew nothing of imprisonment for any civil injury—
the mode of compelling a debtor to pay, before the sta-
tute of 25th Edward 111., cap. 17, which first enabled a
capias to issue against the person in actions of debt and
detinue. It is true that, by the statutes of Marl-
bridge, the 52d Henry 111., cap. 23, and Westmin-
ster 2, 13th Edward 1., cap. 11, a capias was allowed
to take the person in actions of account. Those statutes
passed in derogation of the milder and wiser policy of
the common law, and were made by the great men or
feudal Lords in Parliament, to compel their bailiffs to
account by throwing them into prison. The process
previously of compelling a defendant in actions for
civil injury to obey the king's writ, was by summons,
pledges, and distress, and if necessary by distress infi-
nite. It was the wisdom of our ancient common law,
and we wish our Legislators in Parliament knew a
little more of it than they do—it was, we say, the
wisdom of our ancient common law, to compel a man
to make atonement for every species of civil injury by
process against his property--viz., his goods or chat-
tels, and the profits of his lands ; but, " if he had
no substance, the law held him incapable of mak-
ing satisfaction," as a great authority says, and
" therefore looked upon all further process as nuga-
tory." Now we hold that this was wiser, more hu-
mane, and more politic than shutting a man up in prison
because he is unable to pay his debts, and so making a
bad case worse. This was the spirit of our ancient law
—so, if Mr. Richards respects the wisdom of our an-
cestors, he will pay more reverence to the common
law, which did not imprison the body of the debtor,
than the statute law, which does. There is one point
connected with this subject—an amendment to the
Bill of the Attorney-General, rather than any part of
the original Bill, of which we decidedly disapprove.
We allude to the amendment which is to cover with
the shield of privilege Members of Parliament who
defraud their creditors—a disgraceful privilege to the
Reformed Parliament, we do not hesitate to say, and
for resisting which in the determined manner he did,
Mr. Jervis deserves great credit; as also do Seageant
Wylde, Lord Sandon, Mr. Tooke, Mr. M. Philips,
and Mr. Aglionby, for opposing the amendment.
While arrest for debt simply was allowed, we could
hardly quarrel with the privilege ; but when arrest for
debt is done away with, except in cases where fraud
is committed, or where there is an intenticn to ab-
scond from the jurisdiction, why should Members of
Parliament be privileged ? All fraud is criminal, there-
fore it is that the Insolvent Court has the power to
remand fraudulent debtors. Why, again, we ask,
should a Member of Parliament be exempt from im-
prisonment for a criminal Act ? And if we understand
the Attorney-General's amendment, it has the effect of
giving that exemption or none.—Morning Herald.

The vote of the House of Commons on Wednes-
day, affiming the motion of the Attorney-General in
the Committee on the Abolition of Imprisonment for
Debt Bill, will excite some surprise we imagine, but
.it will certainly give rise to lunch censure through-
out the country. That motion was, in substance, to
enable Members of Parliament to elude the payment of
their just debts—of debts proved to be just in the or-
dinary course of law—more easily and effectually than
any other class of persons. This very discreditable
motion was carried by a majority of only three, or,
without the votes of the Attorney and Solicitor Ge-
neral themselves, by a majority of only one. We
wish, for the honour of the House of Commons, that
the majority had been on the other side ; but, as to the
practical result, we cannot doubt that it will be the
same as if the law officers of the Crown had been
left in a minority, for we suppose it may be regarded
as impossible that the intention of the Attorney-
General should be carried into effect after such a
division upon the subject as we have described. The
privilege which it was intended to confer upon Mem-
bers of Parliament, is, it may be proper to observe, of
somewhat a different nature from that exemption from
arrest which they now enjoy ; for the object of the
measure which confers this new privilege is, to abolish
the practice of arrest for debt altogether, providing for
this process a substitute upon the principle of the
cessio boizorum. The Bill provides, however, that
imprisonment of the person of the debtor may be re-
sorted to, as a penal infliction, when an attempt is con-
tumaciously or fraudulently made by him to resist or
elude the surrender of his property to his creditors ; and
it was from this description of process that the Attor-
ney-General, and the Solicitor-Croneral, and as many as
52 of their supporters, thought that Members of Par-
liament ought to be exempt. We cannot be surprised
that the tellers reported to the Chairman, in the first
instance, the numbers on this side of the question as ten