Year: 1868

all he has on earth may be taken and


sold at enormous sacrifice, aud when he
is penniless he may be refused dis


charge, he is left TO be the bOnd-slsve OF


his creditors, to whom his future earn


ings belong, he can never afterwards


have home or relieve himself OF the


intolerable burthen of his servitude, and
life become to him hell, over the great
gate of which are written the terrible


words of Dante, too well known to need


to be quoted.


It seems 70 US that to exact this is to
violate every principle of justice and
mercy on which bankrupt laws are
founded, and Dy which alone they are
justified,-as those principles are stated


by Story, and recognized by all enlight-
ened JGrists and Statesmen. 1t seems


to US that the merchant whose assets


will not pay fifty cents on the dollar, is
the man to whom the benefits Of the


bankrupt sot may the most justly be ex-
tended. He whose assets will pay that
per centum will rarely need to take the
benefit of the act. II, by succession Of
calamlties, E man is suddenly reduced
from sffiuance to poverty II the red de-
mon of fire consumes all his estats In q


night, or storm wrecks his ships and


makes him beggar, or the failure of a
bank or the treachery of those trusted by
him crushes him at blow, with what
uretence of justice can he be held less
entitled to a discharge than the more
fortunate man, on whom calamity has
laid its hand moro lightly, and who is
certainly no more hopeless and helpless
than he?


For the law to remit the unfortunate
and beggared debtor to the grudged mer-
cies of his ravenous and perhaps dissp-
pointed or suspicious creditors, instead Of
itself discharging him, when it is palpa-
bic that all his property will not pay five
per centum OF his debt, is to reverse the
whole policy on which bankrupt acts
proceed, Is to reverse the telescope and
look through it from the wrong end, is
for the law to ingloriOusly abdicate its
royalty of bsnefeence and sneak out OF
responsibility.


Was it the idea OF the luminaries of
craftsmanship who concocted the law
in question, that there Is more danger of
fraud, when a mans assets are less than
fifty per cent. of his debts, than when
they are more? Was it imagined that
the superior claim to mercy Of the more
able debtor consists In the larger amount
which he is able to pay his creditors?


1t seems to us, also, that to say to
debtors, If you will hasten to rush into
bankruptcy within year, you shall be
discharged of your debts without the
of your creditors, even If your
assets prove not to be sufficient to pay
one cent on the dollar; but if you do not
make haste, if you do not cesse from all
efforts to avoid bankruptcy, if you do not
go into it within the year, you shall not
be discharged, if your assets do not pay
half your debts," was to offer strong in
ducements to all who were in any wise
or who wished to defraud
their creditors, to go iltQ bankruptcy
as soon as possible, and to struggle 10
longer. 1t wss an open enticsment to
fraud.


AS to all persons who are hereafter so
unfortunate as TO be so far ruined as that
their assets will not pay fifty per cent. OF
their debts, the provision in question op-
crates exactly like repeal of all the pro-
visions of the law that are for the bene-
Et Of debtors; while it leaves in force
against theIl ell the provisions that are
for the benefit OF the creditors. 1t be-
comes, as to them, poor, miserable,
lame, limping, halting contrivance, put
ting them entirely at the mercy of their
and itself simply playing the
part of Sheriff OF Constable, to seize and
sell their estate, and turn them naked
put upon the world, with a mountain
upon them to be borne as burthen dur
ing life.


Is there not sense spoUgh, even in
Radical Congress, to see the injustice
and inequality of such a provision of
law? Or have they, in prosecuting the
Southern States, utterly lost all sense Of
Justice.