The Sun.
London, England, 1818-10-03 00:00:00

SCRUTATOR.

Sept. 30, 1818, Wine Office-
court, Fleet-street.

FOR THE SUN.

OF IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT, AND THE ACT OF
I'NSOLVENC Y.

INTRODUCTION.

I. ETTER I.

I now submit to the candour of public judg-
ment what I have long thought a misfortune
arising from expediency, respecting arrests in civil
cases; but which I conceive to be within the
compass of a wholesome remedy.
When we consider the natural rights of indi-
viduals in their extensive sense, there is not a-
country wherein they are more regarded and pro-.
tected than in England. Few and simple under
the immutable laws of Nature, they are enforced
by the refinements of civil institutions, under the
more numerous and complicated laws of Civil
Society.
Natural Liberty being one of the gifts of God
to man, Civil Liberty consists in his being
constrained from doing what he ought not to will.
Though it diminishes the one, it increases the
other, and leaves him in a more secured condi-
tion than he would be in that barbarous freedom,
which he sacrificed to obtain it. So little short
of perfection is it in England, that it banishes
slavery from its dominions, and makes the vassals
of other countries entirely- free in its own. This
elevates it in the esteem of those which, governed
by the imperial laws, are subject to the arbitriurn
of a Prince.
Yet, beautiful and envied as our Civil and Po-
litical Liberties are, they are not, any more than
the all vivifying aun, without a spot, and perhaps
they will ever remain so, unless it be possible to
go back unto first principles, and regulate the
social and moral world anew.
As to our Civil Liberty, it has at all times been
infringed by tyrannical ; but the great
Charter of our Rights, obtained by force front
one Monarch, and confirmed by another, was so
declaratory, that it became their foundation,
which, with the superstructure of thirty-two sta-
tutes, from the reigns of EDWARD the First to
our HENRY the Fourth, the Petition of Right in
the third year of CHARLES the First, the Habeas
Corpus Act in tl►e thirty-first year of his son -
CHARLES the Second, the Bill of Rights, and
Act of Settlement at the Revolution, have in a
great measure established our liberties against the
encroachment of arbitrary men.
But however guarded individuals are, as poli-
tical subjects, and however happy they are under
the dispeosation of justice as chi/ subjects, their
personal liberty is open to improvement. As
tbis consists in the natural power of locomotion
without restraint, the great Charta expresses that
no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned but by
the judgment of his Peers, or the law of the land;
and in almost every sense but one has this bee►i
attended to. By the Act of the sixteenth year of
CHARLES the First, the Habeas Corpus Act, and
the Act of the first year of King Wiwast,
man shall be imp: isoned on any suggestion to the
Crown, but by indictment or process at common
law ; and no man shall be detained in prison con-
trary to law, or be boom' in excessive bail for his
liberation. The personal liberty, therefore, of
political subjects is nearly complete, anti so highly
cloth Magna Charta in this particular seem to have
been venerated by our ancestors, that the per-
sonal liberty of civil subjects was for a time
equally so, in all their affairs between man and
man. The aberrations from this liberty have gra-
dually sapped arid undermined it, in proportion
to the increase of aril and sciences, manufactures,
trade, and commerce, tl►e fountain of pride, va-
nity, and luxury ; but nothing will justify an in.
jury done to personal liberty, whether civil or
political. It is putting one subject into the power
of another, and ends in mischief;—of which more
hereafter.

AN OLD BARRISTER, of tips Inoor Temple,