Year: 1870




Our English cousins, in their zeal for reform,
have taken new bull by the horns. which
they mean apparently to load with the blame
of all the vices of their social system. This
monster is Bankruptcy. 1t is only since the
Act of 1861 that Peer could be brought be-
fore the Court of Bankruptcy. Within few
weeks, four members Of the Upper House have
been declared hopelessly insolvent: where
upon the Press (nOt, of course, at all Influenced
by the old tendency in human nature to kick
a man when he is DOWN have gone to
work to unvail all the frightful abysses Of
moral turpitude which underlie debt and help
the debtor to out-cheat villainy. The insol-
vent Peer is no longer fit to be legislator or
a Judge: the Upper House is called upon to
expel him as promptly as the whale did the
recreant prophet. We are in doubt whether
he should be suffered to retain the
rights of o father or husband. Apart
from their estates, the Peers are no more
ethan four OF five hundred very commonplace
"gentlemen," says The Manchester ErGminer
"Gentlemen who cannot take care of their
"money or estates are certainly out of place
ain an Assembly whose business it is to leg
II
The Economist, sis @ man without leisure,
"public spirit, moderation, knowledge, temper,
cor Judgment. If not illiterate, he is most
"probably so fond of high excitenents as
"to have lost the advantages of any educa-
"tion he may ever have had" In short,
while for the insOlvent merchant or COM
moner there yet remains day Of
grace, for the bankrupt Peer there is
apparently no chance Of redemption, though
he seek it carefully and with tears. Without
money the Duke of Newcastle finds himself
suddenly salt without SAVIOR, cast out and
trodden under foot of every penny-a-liner.
All this accession of sudden virtue to our
English cousins is of course thing to be
wondered at and admired at distance. But
as to imitation Must this matter be brought
home to us7 Is debt actually to be written
down one of the seven deadly sinsf Must
the trusting Micawbers, the childlike Skim
poles among us, who have so long thrown
themselves with touching abandon upon the
breast of society and imbibed their daily milk
and honey without money and without price,
be held as criminals, without the pale of law
or even charityf Heretofore it has required
two or three failures to establish a man
in fashionable society; the first bankruptcy
usually gives him house on Fifth-ave; the
second, o country seat on the Hudson; with
the third he builds q cottage at Newport and
retires from business.


Are we to change all thisi Is mans list
of creditors to become the moral thermometer
by which his place on Change, in the club, in
church even, is to be triedf Must he be
indorsed by his washerwoman as well as by
the wire-pullers of his party before he can
legislate for Ms at Albany or represent us
abroadf The glimpse into this impending So
cial revolution is appallng it is enough to
make the very stones of our public places rise
in nutiny. Problem after problem of fearful
import suggests itself. When only the man
whose hands arc clean of debt rules, what
will become of Tammany7 VIII this bosom of
destruction be brought into Congressf What
will be thefate of our judgesf If "Thou shalt
"not owe thy neighbor" is to follow "Ihou shalt
"not stealn in the Decalogue, how are ministers
of churches to preach it in piles of stone and
mortar which are mortgaged from foundation
to weathercOckf


1t may suit the English to give tongue after
their hunted Peers with the cry that "Willful
" debt is theft;o but to Americans, who make
the same rule suit President and shoeblack, it
is obnoxious in the highest degree. Is the wife
of our bosom to flaunt no longer in unpaid-for
silksf Are we to meet our grocer, whose ba-
con and cheese we have eaten in tranquility
for half year, with the feelings of o pick
pocket9 Our own opinion is that this new
semi-religious awakening is simply strategic
move of the creditors. They mean o corp
Fftat. They mean to attack in the bank.
They mean to swarm out in the market-place,
on the judges bench, in legislative halls.
The very pulpit will not be safe from them.
We shall have second edition of the Bishop
of Hamelin and the rats Win the matter
stop here2 May not the news penetrate
Hades, and defunct creditors arise to claim
their duesf Ghosts have been known in old
times to shrek and squeal about the streets
for less cause than due-bill. Prompt pre-
ventiye measures should be taken. Debtors to
the front The philiatinea orn unor youl