The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-11-17 00:00:00

TO ELIZA M. N.

(For the Liverpool Standard.)
I ride on the curl of the dancing spray ;
I ride on the foam, where the waterfowl play ;
I ride on the surge of the swelling sea ;
And my home is the ocean—the home of the free!
The laugh of the tempest, and roar of the gale,
That sweep with destruction the bill and the dale,
But serve to enhance with a holier zest
The excitement that glows in the mariner's breast.
Though short-lived and empty our pleasures may seem,
As the waves of a lake 'neath the summer sun's beam ;
Yet, sweet in existence. and rapt'rous in birth,
They more than outbalance the pleasures of earth.
When clouds with their blackness o'ershadow the sky,
And nought but a wild foaming waste meets the eye ;
When over the top of the storm-riven flood,
Our bark with her airy wings chases the scud ;
To stand 'mid the hurricane's roar on the deck,
And calmly command 'mid the waters' white wreck ;
0 ! where upon earth is there any such bliss ?
0 ! where is the happiness equal to this?
There is yet a joy beyond all I have told,
Worth oceans of coral-groves, pearl-beds, and gold,
In the kiss and the smile, and the glowing embrace,
That welcome the rover's return from the chase.
Then wake thee, Eliza! 0 wake thee, my love!
And speed from your bow'r, dear, swift as the dove ;
For e'en ere the morning dawn, courting the breeze,
Your lover must hasten to roam o'er the seas.
I woo not like landsmen, with words fair and sweet,
Whose promises, light as the driving scud, fleet ;
But I woo with that ardour a mariner knows,
Whose soul with attachment and interest glows.
Then awake thee, Eliza! and hasten with me,
And to-morrow we'll roam o'er the boundless sea ;
Where apart from this world, and apart from its guile,
We'll live in affection and love's beaming smile.
Liverpool, Nov. 12, 1840. A. M. N.

LINES
ADDRESSED TO THE REV. HUGH STOWELL

(For the Liverpool Standard.)

Courage, thou soldier of the cross!
Not yet the work is done ;
Fear not their close and dark'ning ranks,
The field shall yet be won!
Bind hope's bright helmet on thy brow,
Gird on the Spirit's sword,
And go, go forth to victory,

Thou servant of the Lord !
Thy haughty fog shall fall, when they
Behold thy girdle bright;
Their blinded eyes can not endure
Truths flashing, vivid light.
Harmless behold their darts recoil

From off thy polished shield ;
To Him who nerves thy giant arm
The proudest foe must yield.
Yet rest not, for not yet to blood,
Soldier hast thou striven ;
Be thine the martyr's fiery zeal,
And thine the martyr's Heaven.
For sooner than our blessed land
Should crouch 'neath Rome's dark reign,
The stake shall flame, the life-blood flow
From many a British vein.
Oh ! many a prayer ascends
For thy high cause and thee :
Warrior, go forth! and may thy God
Lead thee to victory !

G. E. M.

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

ARREST FOR DEBT.
(From.the Times.)

Arrest for debt on mesne process having now been
abolished by act of Parliament, we are not surprised to
find the public expecting as a consequence the aboli-
tion of imprisonment in execution. The Commis-
sioners for inquiring into Bankruptcy and Insolvency
recommend this abolition in their report (p. 26), and
to such a measure (as part of their general plan, and
particularly in connection with their proposal of a new
and speedily enforceable act of bankruptcy by default
of the debtor to pay or secure the deist on summons)
we incline to assent, provided that all the debtor's
means of every description, whether he be a trader or
not, be made available to his creditors, without any ex-
emption of half-pay or pension, or debts owing to him,
or property in Ireland, or in the colonies, and so reci-
procally. (See the evidence of Sir F. W. Myers, pp.
131 to 141.) The only property which the law could
not be made to reach is what the debtor may possess
in any foreign country ; and if, having foreign pro-
perty, he refuse to apply it to the payment of his debts
here, his case may be very fitly left under the law of
imprisonment in execution, on the same principle on
which the general exemption from arrest on mesne
process is withheld from a debtor attempting to go
abroad. All that can be done for the creditors is to
secure to them the whole of his remaining property :
when this is effected (as in general it might be through
the speedy act of bankruptcy proposed in lieu of the
arrest on mesne process), there is no further fruit to
be obtained from the imprisonment; but until the le-
gislature ensure justice by the introduction of an im-
mediately enforceable act of bankruptcy, and by the
extension of the creditor's remedy to the whole of the
debtor's property, it is plain that the law of imprison-
Ment in execution cannot be abrogated with safety.
Nor under any circumstances would we place the dis-
honest debtor, whether in or out of trade, beyond the
reach of some penal power of imprisonment like that
now exercised by the Court of Insolvency. Of this
we shall have occasion to speak more precisely in its
proper place, as being an imprisonment rather for pu-
nishment, which is example, than for debt. And the
same principle will apply to a suggestion of Mr. S.
Batchelor, solicitor (p. 503), for leaving the law of im-
prisonment to take effect " in cases of crim. con. and
cases provided for by the new act for abolishing arrest
on mesne process. —See 1 and 2 Victoria, c. 110,
s. 78.
On the whole, condemning as we do the paltry, po-
pularity-hunting policy, which abolished arrest on
mesne process without providing any tantamount re-
medy to the creditor, we yet decidedly wish to see the
abolition of imprisonment in execution. The late Mr.
Raincock, an eminent barrister on the northern circuit,
says neatly and truly, "arrests pay debts—gaols do
not."—(P. 380.) The following passage too, of the
evidence given by Mr. P. Johnson, one of the official
assignees of the Court of Bankruptcy, has great
weight :—"The average number of insolvencies for the
last three years is upwards of four thousand per an-
num; the debtors, on an average, spend more than
40s. a week in gaol, and, I suppose, 30s. for their fa-
milies. To raise these sums property belonging to the
creditors, to more than double the amount, must be
sacrificed; and if only six weeks are reckoned for each
insolvent, the property thus sacrificed would amount to
£42 each, or £168,000 per annum. If you add to
this the lost wages of the debtor to society while in
prison at 30s. a week, and the prison expenses to the
county, the amount will be nearly £250,000 per an-
num."—(P. 194.)
But this is not all. There must be added to the
account the costs of the creditor in obtaining his judg-
ment, and the costs of the debtor in obtaining his dis-
charge from the Court of Insolvency. It appears, on
a return made from that court (Report, p. 23), that
the number of persons imprisoned in town and coun-
try during the 14 months which intervened from the
Ist of October to the Ist of December in last year was
3,905. Out of this number of cases, dividends were
paid in only 199. and 361 were remanded, " whilst in
the remaining 3,345 cases the costs of proceeding to
judgment, taken at the estimate of £2O for each action
(which would be a low estimate for actions in the su-
perior courts), would have amounted to £66,900. It
appears that the minimum expense attending the dis-
charge of an insolvent is five guineas, and if £6 be
taken as a low average, £20,070 would have been ex-
pended by the 3,345 debtors above-mentioned in pro-
curing their discharge ; adding this to the £66,900
expended in putting them into prison, £86,970 would
appear to have been unprofitably consumed in the
above period of 14 months."
If 14 months would have produced this loss, one
year must have produced a loss of about £74,545,
which, being added to the £250,000 computed by Mr.
P. Johnson, gives a total damage to the country of
almost £325,000 per annum.
It is true that imprisonment in execution has some-
times the effect of inducing payment from the families
and friends of the debtor; but it is scarcely possible
to approve this pressure upon the feelings of persons
not being the parties to whom the credit was given.
Young people indeed, at college, and elsewhere, are
sometimes supplied with goods on the credit of their
friends ; but, except as relates to those necessaries for
which the law makes parents liable, it is obvious that
instead of protecting, at the expense of relatives, those
' tradesmen who lead young people into extravagance
by facility of credit, the legislature should in every
possible way discourage such creditors, for the pur-
pose of preventing such credits. "Where the debtor
has arrived at an age at which he may fairly be pre-
sumed to be dealing upon his own means, and not
merely relying upon the responsibility of his friends,
we do not, we confess, entertain the hope that the
abolition of the remedy of imprisonment will produce
any very great increase of caution among the creditor
classes. We do not apprehend that amidst the hot
competition of trade so remote a consideration can
ever have much force in withholding shopkeepers
from executing orders. But certainly so long as im-
prisonment in execution be suffered to remain, we shall
not have given to this check its fair trial. When the
law shall have completely abrogated the power over
the debtor's person, by abolishing the final as well as
the original imprisonment, then it will be, if at all,
that the caution of the creditor will be brought fairly
into exercise.

It has been objected, say the commissioners, that if
the power of arrest in execution shall be taken away,
the burden and risk of realizing the debtor's property
will be thrown upon the creditor instead of the debtor
himself. But to this they conclusively answer, that if
it he desirable to leave the realization of his property
to the debtor, he is likely to effect it more profitably
when at liberty than within the walls of a prison.
The effect of confinement, according to the evidence
of the keepers of the prisons, as given before,
thatthe
Commission on the Courts of Common Law, is
debtors speedily begin to feel the contaminating influ-
ence of the gaol. To that evidence the present report
refers, adding this cogent remark, with which we con-
elude our observations upon the question of imprison.