The Sun.
London, England, 1832-03-08 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TEE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

Nothing could be more gratifying to every friend
of legal improvement than to hear from the Lord
Chancellor, on Tuesday evening, in moving for a
• copy of the last report of the Common Law Com-
missioners, that the majority of these Commissioners
bad expressed their hostility to the practice of im-
prisonment for debt, and that his Lordship's own
enlightened mind concurred in their opinion. We
have repeatedly invited attention to this important
subject, and recommended a change in the existing
law, not more from a regard to the hardships and
sufferings of the debtor, than from a wish to support
the rights and to promote the interests of the credi-
tor. It may be thfficult to persuade the trading
portion of the community, who are particularly
liable to be imposed upon by the dishonest and frau-
dulent, to accede to our views; but even they must
be convinced, in the progress of the discussion
which the recommendation of the Commis-
sioners will occasion, that the enlightened hu-
manity and true policy of a law are the same
thing—and that they will ultimately gain in the ma-
nagement of their dealings by the surrender of a
kind of penal menace to their customers. Nobody
ran pay a moment's attention to the number and
character of the persons who fill our debtors' wards,
—to the usual motives for which they are hunted to
a gaol, or allowed to escape from •it—and to the
small—the totally insignificant sums—recovered by
this harsh process from the ruins of their estates,
without admitting that this legal remedy of the
creditor is as inefficient as it is cruel. In many cases
not a penny in the pound can be extorted from
fraud, or recovered from honest misfortune; and out
of the four or five thousand insolvents who are an-
eually sent to gaol, and then walked out of it
through the Insolvent Court into the world anew,
with their long schedules in their hands, we question
whether the estates of a third part will pay the
attorney's bill of their creditors. Practically speak-
ing, therefore, the exercise of the present law,
though it may be accompanied with great suffering,
—though it may be made the instrument of brutal ven-
geance,—though it may inflict upon misfortune all the
penalties due to crime,does not " work well" in accom-
plishing it s object. Nor was it probable a priothhat it
should. The shopkeeper, tradesman, or other cre-
ditor, relying on the terrors which a threat of ims
prisonment inspires, is often induced to give trust
to a larger amount than he would otherwise do if
he only looked to the known estate or visible re-
sources of his debtor. Dishonest himself, he spe-
culates on being the first to employ the magic touch
of the bailiff's staff, unknown to his neighbours,
and expects satisfaction for his debt in a race to gaol
with others, who, like him, have trusted the insol-
eent with a similar delusive; hope. Some of them
may be paid to avoid this catastrophe—so long as
the debtor has any chance of maintaining his ground
and keeping the rest of his creditors at bay. When
this is no longer possible, he is hunted to prison,
s.vith his numerous dupes in full cry at his heels.
They thus consider themselves as having a fair
chase; they are all, according to sportsmen's phrase,
"in at the death," but, like sportsmen of another
kind, they have only the brush for their pains. Were
tradesmen deprived of this power of enforcing their
demands,—were they taught to look only to the
personal resources, and net to the personal punish-
ment, of their debtor, they would give less credit,—
they would incur less risk ;—they would carry
on a more steady and less gambling business ;
—their profits would be greater at the end of
the year ;—they would have fewer bad debts on their
books;—they would discourage profligacy, and pre-
y nt fraud, in the thoughtless or dishonest, loan extent
which would not be less felt as an improvement of
public murals, than a protection to private fortunes
or honest industry. But, after all, what can trades-
men hope to gain from the imprisonment of the
debtor which they could not gain during his enjoy-
ment of personal freedom ? The threat of a gaol
may certainly do something, as in the case above
mentioned ; but actual confinement must be produc-
tive only of hopeless mischief. If the embarrass-
ments of the prisoner have arisen from misfortune,
aid it without the walls of a pi icon he had nothing
to pay, how can he find the necessary resources
within it, cut off as he is from the power of exer-
cising his industry,—torn from his usual employ-
mente,—deprived of the support of his family,—
and discredited in the eyes of the uncharitable
world ? If, on the other hand, the prisoner has
contracted debts without any prospect of being
able to pay them,—if he has squandered in profli-
gacy those means which were pre-engaged to his
creditors—if, in short, he has committed acts of dis-
honesty little short of punishable fraud, still his
confinement, not being inflicted as a punishment,
can be beneficial neither to his creditors nor to so.
ciety. Thus, while we admit that in contracting
debt there may be every variety of moral innocence
or demerit—that it may, according to circumstances,
be viewed a; an object of pity or of indignation—
that a debtor may be as pure as a saint, or as crimi-
nal as a thief --we can see no propriety in that
species of treatment which cannot benefit the cre-
ditor in filling his pockets, and which confounds in
one common doom misfortune and guilt, honesty
and fraud. But while we contend for the policy of
abolishing imprisonment for debt, ae debt, either
On mesne process, or on a judgment, we concur in
the Lord Chancellor's excellent suggestions, that it •
must be reserved by the law for the punishment of
contumacy, for concealment of effects, or to enforce
compliance with the awards of justice. In shoo, it
should be maintained as a penal infliction, and not
used as indiscriminate and useless torture.—Thees.
The adversaries of Lord Plueket, in both Houses
of Parliament, seem resolved never to let him forget
that he has the happiness to be the father of a nume-
rous family, well provided for at the public expense.
It probably may not deserve remark in the. present
state of Irish excitement, but in ordinary times it
would indeed eeern singular, that his Lordship's
accusers should all be his own countrymen, and his
chief defenders natives of this part of the empire.
Are his Lordship's virtues less known, his services
less prized, or his talents more dreaded, at home
than among strangers ? The attack in which Lon-
donderry failed, because his artillery was too much
within range of his adversary's shells, was on Tues-
day night attempted with better success by Mr.
Dawson in another field. The Right Hon. Gentle-
man boldly advanced to the charge ire the absence
of the chief defendant, and hail beau jeu of the five
or six Plunkete, with their nephews and cousins, •
Mr. Spring Rice kindly endeavoured to cover them
from the assault, or to soften the effect of the blow,
by interposing a noble Tory Earl's son wrapped
round and enveloped in six enormous sinecures; but
he did not succeed. The House st;il saw behind
this defence the family of the young Plunkets re-
joicing in their " multitudinous" emoluments, and
they did not think that six places in the hands of
one Chancellor's son justified the four soas of
another Chancellor for engrossing eight or ten. It
is not contended, nor can it be, that these young
gentlemen are unequal to the duties which they have
to perform, but it is alleged that the fitness of the
places for them has been more thought of than of
their fitness for the places.—Times.
Some men have strange notions of renown. Lord
Grey is said, on respectable authority, to fear that
his own reputation with future ages 'M
might be
pre-
judiced where he to carry the question of Reformbyany "vio/ent" policy. Has his Lordship, then, no
compassion for the pitiable condition of his own
fame in the event of his suffering the Reform Bill
to be defeated ? Has he. forgotten—has the pro-
gress of natural decay been so terribly rapid within
the last three or four months as to have effaced from
the Noble Lord's mind his own declaration, which .
remains so vivid on that of every one else in the
community—viz., that " if the Reform Bill fell, he
must fall with it ?" If Lord Grey, in the face of
the King.. and people, staked his political existence
on a Reform of Parliament, he being aware how
Parliament 'was actually constituted, and what a
mass of selfish interests..miust inevitably be roused
to oppose him, he could not—it was physically im-
possible for him to imagine Elea great " violence'