Star.
London, England, 1831-07-14 00:00:00

THURSDAY EVENING, JULY 14, 1831.

Section 2.—Tho notice respecting so much of the Act as
enjoins personal service.
Section 3.—The Insolvent Court, its constitutional cha-
racter ; its infliction of long, close imprisonments, without
the protection of a jury.
Section 4.—To repeal the clause in the present Insolvent
Act, compelling all Debtors, first to undergo a long preli.
minary, close imprisonment within the wall+, before they
ate allowed to take the benefit of the act.

Section s.—lmposing the obligation on those who con-
fine to maiatain.

Section 6.—Repealing so much of the Act as subjects to
execution the future acquisition of insolvents.
Section 7—To introduce a clause in the re-enactment of
the present Insolvent Act, to render illegal the sudden re-
moval of a prisoner from his domicile in the King's Bench
to the Fleet prison, and vice versa from the Fleet to the
King's Bench, on fresh actions being brought tt these res-
padre Courts.
Section B.—Restoring the old law, revoked without the
authority of parliament, by which every Englishman's
house was his castle, and rendering it on civil process,
illegal to take him, either out of his house or his apart-
ment.

It is to be expected that the facts and reasoning
contained in these sections will be contested by the
harpies of the law. The existence of some abuses
will be denied, the enormity of others extenuated,
and the impossibility, nay, the danger, of adopting
the proposed reforms, will be hypocritically insisted
upon. The general principle, however, carries with
it the internal evidence of its truth ; and it is im-
possible for the most sinister interests, or the most
determined bad faith, to lessen their force, or to
deny the propositions deducible from them. One
fact is incontrovertible, that during this conflict of
opinions, the victims increase. They continue to
suffer and complain; minds of sensibility deplore
their wretchedness, and the callous take refuge in
their doubts.

Under these circumstances, it is the duty of le-
gislation, instead of allowing crude and ephemeral
statutes to be eternally passing to its opprobrium,
and aggravating the evil, to take into enlightened
consideration reforms projected for the public be-
nefit. This purpose can be obtained by no better
measure than by having recourse to the learning,
experience, and humanity of a general committee;
who, with no other interest than that of truth, after
a profound and candid examination come to a de-
cision calculated to remove every doubt ; and to
establish one uniform consistent debtor and creditor
law.

We have stated, that it is our intention to give
from time to lime extracts from Mr. Jennyn's pam-
phlet. On the present occasion we shall confine
ourselves to the insertion of the clear and luminous
introduction of the author ; to which we invite the
attention of our readers.

The Great Frederic, immediately on his coming
to the throne, abolished, throughout his dominions,
the use of torture ; the putting an end to it, fur-
nishing, as he said, one of the certain means of
not confounding the innocent with the guilty. It
was his enlightened policy to apportion the punish-
ment to the offence,

4411 regula, perealis qua penal irroget *Ow ;
Nr scutica dignum sectore flagella.
Not so in England. The preliminary close impri-
sonment before trial, to which every insolvent is
indiscriminately doomed by the present act, now to
be le-enacted with that monstrous clause unre-
pealed, is tha direct converse of the humane prin-
ciple of the Fred2rician code. The Insolvent Act
treats alike the innocent and the guilty ; it visits
with the same indiscriminating severity the impru-
pent and the criminal; in its operation, audacious
fraud and timid imprudence meet in the same jail.
The swindler, who has committed every depredation
on society, and the father of a family, charged
with no other offence than accepting credit, are, by
that absurd statute, indifferently condemned to a
close confinement within the walls, there to remain
during the whole of the proceedings.° It is the
wisdom of the law to punish first, and to judge
after.

Torture is abolished throughout the continent
of Europe ; in England, it is an hourly practice.
Names do not change the essence of things.
A long, close, hopeless, confinement, is as severe a

torture as the rack or the thumb-screw. What it
loses in intensity, it gains in duration. The pre-
liminary close imprisonment enjoined by the pre-
sent Act, in the first step of the process, is a cer-
tain punishment affixed to an uncertain offence.
It is at all times a dreadful calamity. But, if the
prisoner be cursed with en imagination, or with a
heart of any sensibility, the torture of imprison-
ment is increased and aggravated at every moment
of its duration. Yet it seems, as if the law exulted
in the torture of the mind ; more oriel, more in-
human than that of the body, on which it prema
turely fastens its chains.
Who then can doubt than. imprisonment, without
any legal procedure, without a judgment, and, when
the issue of its being deserved is uncertain, is a
monster in criminal jurisprudence, teeming with
inevitable injustice.
When we turn our eyes on the invasion of that
domestic sanctuary, the house, by which the law
authorizes the satellites of its violence to outrage
the secret recesses of families, and to storm with
ruffian assault that asylum, every where else
respected, we see an inqnisiticn, mere scandalous,
more atrocious, established in Engl.nd, in that land
of liberty, selr-called its temple, than is to be found
in any other country, the most despotic and unci-
vilised.

How much then is a reform wanted, when this
tyranny is hourly exercised, with no other title,
than the affidavit of a creditor; when a powfr
and a confidence are given by it, perhaps to a con-
temptible impostor, before trial and without a
judgment, possessed by no ministers of justice.
The humane pert of the public look to Sir Robert
peel for the abrogation of abuses, which hate
'been allbived to creep into the administration of
the law. It is with gratitude, they acknowledge

PRICE SEVENPENCE.

the invaluable reforms which he has so success-
fully introduced; that growing evils have been
removed ; that apt remedies have been applied to
the prominent imperfections in our criminal code.
It is to him they owe, dint the roots of an infinity
of abstract questions, eternal and ruinous, have
been cat up ; and that, on many essential points,
he has laid the foundation of a jurisprudence uni-
form and intelligible.
The country has almost much to expect from the
assiduous humanity, the sound judgment, and
honourable pereerverence of Lord Aithorpe.
To Sir James Scarlett, His Majesty's Attorney-
General, what thanks arc not due, for the noble
stapd he is opposing to the superstition of lawyers,
to professiOnal habits and inveterate prejudices, by
hie generous efforts, to render jails less necessary ;
to unfetter the poverty-stricken prisoner, and to
conciliate the general interests of humanity with the
essential rights of property'.
How much shall I congratulate myself, if, by
bringing under such intelligent consideration, the
errors, the cruel errors of the law, of which I have
drawn an unfinished outline, they be promptly abro-
gated, and cease to be its disgrace. Above all, it is
most urgent, that instant attention be directed to
the mischievous construction of the Insolvent
Court; to the enormity of the act, imposing on
the insolvent, before he can seek that benefit of the
statute, a preliminary punishment in the com-
mencement of the process ; and to the cumber-
some form of the personal service of the notice
which it prescribes.
It is, no doubt, the essence of every general
law, and of the particular rules derivative from it,
that he who comes within their operation should be
able to execute them. Experience, more impe-
rative than any law—more decisive than any rule,
has pronounced on the impracticability of those
contained in the act. But the delay, the 'fur-
ther imprisonment, the misery occasioned by
them, are of daily occurrence. This is not all ;
the new, dangerous power, conceded to three in-
dividuals, and not possessed by any, the highest
tribunals of the country, of inflicting, without a
jury, dreadful, long, close imprisonments, ought
to be immediately revoked. Decisions follow
from them, by which thousands of families are an-
nually desolated ; fathers sent to perish in jail, and
their children to be maintained by the parish.

The re-enactment of the present insolvent bill
without the addition of some new clauses, and
without the repeal of the baneful ones, by which
so many silent oppressions have been authorized,
and so many orphans have been been made, if de-
ferred to a future period, if postponed to another
session, abuses will accumulate, and new victims
be added to the dismal catalogue.
It was my original intention to have given a
certain extent to the sacred principles I am anxious
to sustain. But finding that the present insolvent
act, on the motion of Mr. Bright, the member for
Bristol, was, for the present to be re-enacted, with
all its imperfections on its head, I felt the necessity
of precipitating this unfinished work, in the hope,
that some of the most glaring defects of the statute
might be removed.
I may be permitted to return to it, and to treat,
more in detail, what so much affects the best in-
terests of society--the personal liberty of its in-
digent members ; the corruption of the laws, and
the best means of applying the remedy.
Some of these reflections have already been
given to the public; but there are truths, of which
the importance justifies the repetition. lam the
more inclined to venture on reprinting the sub-
stance of them, from the flattering enlogium with
which they had been distinguished in the House
of Lords, by that great man, the late Earl Stan-
hope. It was my pride to have been honoured by
his friendship, and encouraged by his approbation.
In this undertaking, I have no other motive than
to advocate the cause of human liberty ; to protect
bumble indigence from oppressive opulence; to
lessen imprisonments, always ruinous, and too
I often fatal ; to expose powerful iniquity, with that
truth which it has proscribed.
If in the course of my progress I have met with
the basest ingratitude ; VI have met with neither
honours nor riches, I console myself in the reflec-
tion, that on the road •1 have sown some truths,
which have not been unproductive ; and, if the oc-
casion should occur, they might lend their aid to
oppressed innocence, when pursued by injustice,
and disregarded by prejudice.