Idler No. 22. Saturday, September 16, 1758.
Oh nomen dulce libertatis! Oh jus eximium nostra civitatis!
CICERO.
TO THE IDLER.
Sir,
As
I was passing lately under one of the gates of this city, I was struck
with horrour by a rueful cry, which summoned me _to remember the poor
debtors_.
The wisdom and justice of the English laws are, by
Englishmen at least, loudly celebrated: but scarcely the most zealous
admirers of our institutions can think that law wise, which, when men
are capable of work, obliges them to beg; or just, which exposes the
liberty of one to the passions of another.
The prosperity of a
people is proportionate to the number of hands and minds usefully
employed. To the community, sedition is a fever, corruption is a
gangrene, and idleness an atrophy. Whatever body, and whatever society,
wastes more than it acquires, must gradually decay; and every being that
continues to be fed, and ceases to labour, takes away something from
the publick stock.
The confinement, therefore, of any man in the
sloth and darkness of a prison, is a loss to the nation, and no gain to
the creditor. For of the multitudes who are pining in those cells of
misery, a very small part is suspected of any fraudulent act by which
they retain what belongs to others. The rest are imprisoned by the
wantonness of pride, the malignity of revenge, or the acrimony of
disappointed expectation.
If those, who thus rigorously exercise
the power which the law has put into their hands, be asked, why they
continue to imprison those whom they know to be unable to pay them; one
will answer, that his debtor once lived better than himself; another,
that his wife looked above her neighbours, and his children went in silk
clothes to the dancing-school; and another, that he pretended to be a
joker and a wit.
Some will reply, that if they were in debt, they should
meet with the same treatment; some, that they owe no more than they can
pay, and need therefore give no account of their actions. Some will
confess their resolution, that their debtors shall rot in jail; and some
will discover, that they hope, by cruelty, to wring the payment from
their friends.
The end of all civil regulations is to secure
private happiness from private malignity; to keep individuals from the
power of one another; but this end is apparently neglected, when a man,
irritated with loss, is allowed to be the judge of his own cause, and to
assign the punishment of his own pain; when the distinction between
guilt and happiness, between casualty and design, is intrusted to eyes
blind with interest, to understandings depraved by resentment.
Since
poverty is punished among us as a crime, it ought at least to be
treated with the same lenity as other crimes; the offender ought not to
languish at the will of him whom he has offended, but to be allowed some
appeal to the justice of his country. There can be no reason why any
debtor should be imprisoned, but that he may be compelled to payment;
and a term should therefore be fixed, in which the creditor should
exhibit his accusation of concealed property. If such property can be
discovered, let it be given to the creditor; if the charge is not
offered, or cannot be proved, let the prisoner be dismissed.
Those
who made the laws have apparently supposed, that every deficiency of
payment is the crime of the debtor. But the truth is, that the creditor
always shares the act, and often more than shares the guilt, of improper
trust. It seldom happens that any man imprisons another but for debts
which he suffered to be contracted in hope of advantage to himself, and
for bargains in which he proportioned his profit to his own opinion of
the hazard; and there is no reason why one should punish the other for a
contract in which both concurred.
Many of the inhabitants of
prisons may justly complain of harder treatment. He that once owes more
than he can pay, is often obliged to bribe his creditor to patience, by
increasing his debt. Worse and worse commodities, at a higher and higher
price, are forced upon him; he is impoverished by compulsive traffick,
and at last overwhelmed, in the common receptacles of misery, by debts,
which, without his own consent, were accumulated on his head. To the
relief of this distress, no other objection can be made, but that by an
easy dissolution of debts fraud will be left without punishment, and
imprudence without awe; and that when insolvency should be no longer
punishable, credit will cease.
The motive to credit is the hope
of advantage. Commerce can never be at a stop, while one man wants what
another can supply; and credit will never be denied, while it is likely
to be repaid with profit. He that trusts one whom he designs to sue, is
criminal by the act of trust: the cessation of such insidious traffick
is to be desired, and no reason can be given why a change of the law
should impair any other.
We see nation trade with nation, where
no payment can be compelled. Mutual convenience produces mutual
confidence; and the merchants continue to satisfy the demands of each
other, though they have nothing to dread but the loss of trade.
It
is vain to continue an institution, which experience shows to be
ineffectual. We have now imprisoned one generation of debtors after
another, but we do not find that their numbers lessen. We have now
learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking
credit; let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily
restrained from giving it.
I am, Sir, &c.
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