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R [ E ^ mmmmt^Hm^m 806 THE LEADE . No. 4...
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IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT. When -will the co...
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mmw ^ mwTkAv KJMaJiWJlKAlION Ol LOJNDOjN
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Collegiate Keform At Cambridge. The Time...
E ^ ^ Hm ^ have in their earlier- years shown intellectual energy is eminently desirable . But an arbitrary and indiscriminate rule like that . suggested for terminating all fellowships on the expiry of ten years , seems to us about as stupid and indefensible as that for which it is meant as a substitute . It savours to us too much of the doctrinaire spirit of bureaucracy , and to lack the wisdom . of adaptation to varying circumstances and conditions which we should consider indispensable if the new system is seriously intended for permanency . Why every able and studious man should be banished from his
college at two or three-and-thirty , merely because he has spent the prime of his youth within , its walls , without any regard to the loss or benefit his banishment may be to the institution , we cannot , for the life of us , perceive . Surely some plan might be devised for winnowing the wheat from the chaff , and for getting rid only of the latter .
R [ E ^ Mmmmt^Hm^M 806 The Leade . No. 4...
R [ mmmmt m 806 THE LEADE . No . 438 , _ AgrosT 14 , 1858 .
Imprisonment For Debt. When -Will The Co...
IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT . When -will the commercial mind of this commercial country cease to demand that misfortune shall continue to be dealt with as a crime ? "Will the time ever come when we shall be disposed to regard an honest debtor in any other light than that which is held to be the true light by a nation—shall we say , a clique—of shopkeepers ? "When , in short , shall we be disposed to look at the question of debtor and creditor in its correct point of view , and reform
cur legislation accordingly ? Why should we continue to cage a man , possibly for the sole reason that he has not been able to do trade enouejh to get profit enough , from his customers to pay his creditors in full ? We contend for the broad principle that no man ought to be deprived of his liberty on account of honest unavoidable debt . But then we shall be told by the hard-fisted creditor , if we abolish imprisonment , we shall be opening a wide door to fraud and to the swindler . To this
We answer , ttat where fraud or swindling is proved , or even suspected , let justice be strictly dealt out on the offender . When a man is unable to pay his debts in full , we would not , as a preliminary step to releasing him from Jiis liabilities , abstract his body from his business and his wife and children , and lock him up in "Whitecross-street after having stripped him , wife , and family of money , movables , and the means of very ^ existence . - But such is the course taken alike with honest and fraudulent debtors . ^ Would it not be better , more conformable with . right reason , humanity ,, common sense , aud Christianity , first to ascertain the origin and cause of insolvency before sentencing a man perhaps to unmerited punishment ? Yet this sort of Jedburgh justice we do daily on our debtors .
No man , we think , will contend that , where debt is th p result of circumstances which have no taint within them of dishonesty , and which could neither have been foreseen or avoided , the debtor should be called upon to receive the preliminary punishment of a prison . First , we say , let an investigation show that a debtor has contracted debts arid liabilities well knowing he had no present or prospective means of payment , never intending to pay , or we will go further and say , hoping only to be in a condition to pay at some future time , but not at the
time stipulated for , and then let the weight of the law follow . But , in the case of the honest debtor , let there toe no imprisonment or needless delay in granting protection . Oar attention has been called to this subject by a report from Captain Hicks , the Governor of Whitecross-street Prison , relative to the abuses of the system of imprisonment for debt and the hardships and injustice sustained by debtors . The petition sets forth the extortions of legal harpies who infest these prisons , and who undertake ., for a stipulated sum , to get debtors through the Insolvent Court . Captain Hicks suggests certain changes as desirable . His report states : —
A great change in matters is moat desirable , and under that conviction I offer certain suggestions the adoption of which will inevitably be attended by—1 . The expeditious discharge of prisoners . 2 . Economy of charitable funds . 5 . Increase in the number of cases relieved . 4 . The absolute freedom of the prisoner on h s discharge . 6 . The prevention of extortion on the part of the boiodtor .
The « o object * obtained , a death-blow to most pernicious practices would bo struck . To effect them , a " prison solicitor" should bo appointed o conduct all charitable cases , at the sumo sum for
each , calculated on the average of botli the great and small ones . These changes may do some good , but they will not reach our case , nor will they carry out the principle for -which we contend . That principle is to punish fraudulent debtors as heavily as you please , but to inflict no punishment what ever on tnc unfortunate debtor . Take the ordinary process of arrest for debt . The debtor is removed from his business , or home , to gaol . All his property , except a few articles of clothing , is taken from him by the officers of the Insolvent Court . A beggar before , but now xeduced to absolute destitution , deprived of the means of exerting himself in his' business or
vocation whereby alone money can honestly be earned , he is required to go through a legal process—comparatively speaking , to him an expensive processnecessitating the employment and payment of a lawyer before he can get his discharge . He must file his petition , must wait in prison a certain time before he can be discharged by an Insolvent Debtor Commissioner , who possibly has in his own person just before exemplified the process of getting whitewashed . Now how , in the name of common sense , can a debtor , reduced by the action of the Insolvent Debtors' Court to the very lowest grade of positive beggary , obliged to take an oath that he has made a true return in his schedule and retained
nothing' from his creditors , but given up everything to the uttermost farthing , —how is he , without committing perjury , to find the means of satisfying lawyers , and , we believe , the fees of the court and the prison ? It is true there are good Samaritans who may be appealed to for help , but we contend that the honest debtor ought not to be reduced to the necessity of soliciting ; his discharge from prison through the aid of charitable funds subscribed by strangers—he ought not , having committed no moral offence , to be placed in a condition in wliich either his personal liberty or his feelingsare outraged .
YVe are not among those who regard the mere fact of incarceration ., or the regulations adopted in debtors' prisons , at least in . those of the metropolis , as matters of any -very great hardship . From ¦ what -we have seen and heard , we are satisfied prisons are frequently havens of peace and material comfort to many debtors—they are not -without their advantages , nay , they have their pleasures too . Some of the iolliest fellows we ev er met with were men who had contrived to bring themselves
within the four walls of one of her Majesty ' s suburban retreats , who found the place so much to their liking that they voluntarily sought to have detainers lodged against them to prevent their release . But say what you will , there is an indelible mark left upon a man who has once visited a prison , whether as debtor or criminal , innocent or guilty . It is because we would shield innocence from that reproach , not on the individual only , but on his family also , that we would ask for a reconsideration of our laws as far as debtors are concerned .
Mmw ^ Mwtkav Kjmajiwjlkalion Ol Lojndojn
REGENERATION OF LONDON . " The degeneracy of the age" is aery so offlm repeated by the shepherds of society , that it has ) ccome a disregarded cant ; but the wolf has sometimes arrived at last , and at present he is devouring the nock rather voraciously . The Registrar-General reports that , during the past quarter , there were iu England and Wales alone 27 , 000 deaths front preventable causes . " The arrangements of society , " therefore , arc clearly convicted of homicide . The Times goes beyond the statistics of the Registrar-General , and declares that they do not sufficiently measure the diminution of life wliich is taking place in the country , as exhibited in -various forms . For instance , the recruiting oiliccrs have a greater difficulty in finding men of the requisite height and health . It is notorious that the merchant navv extends , as the population docs , at a rate disproportionate to the supply of able seamen . The Times points to the condition ' of people inhabiting the poorer districts iu towns , who show the low scale ot vitality in . their outward aspect ; and it draws a graphic picture of the pale , helpless , shrunken creatures that lmunt the thickest neighbourhoods of the metropolis . Other writers huve done the same , years back ; the difference now is , that tl \ c number of these creatures is largely increasing ; , and that with tho expansion of our towns such unhappy people arc mote than over cut off from any reviving influences that they could formerly snatch . Tho proportion of town population and country population is
daily changing m England- as well as l ? r ^ and there is a corresponding increase in tim « ,, bers of the sickly over the healthy . Mora ^ ^ physiologists ask whether this is to go on ? The iW tical statesman sees that with the steady dcclm ^ S vital energy in this country the materials of nation ?! power decline . And if a comparatively & S people can tend the machinery which is ffradinlk supplanting hand labour , it is not that kind of liij that can man our ships or our land forces ^ hDe statesmanship itself must grow sickly when based upon a steadily degenerating nation . « Something must be done , " therefore , to arrest the decline
But what ? Every circle can point to "the cause of the decline , and has its own " remedy" ' at hand . " It is all the dreadful state of morality >" cry some- "That arises , " others aver , "from ignorance , " as they prove by the better conduct of tlte better educated classes ; the remedy , therefore is more schools " It is putting the enemy into his mouth that leads him astray , " cries a third circle" the public-house is the true abyss of destruction * and the Maine . liquor La \ v the true salvation ! the Band of Hope the true pioneers of national redemption . " A large number of gentlemen in black declare that the cause is " spiritual destitution " " the public / ' they say , " are in the most frightful state of destitution , —that is , they have no adequate supply of us . " There is not enough church ; there is only in the for
standing-room ^ metropolis thirty-seven per cent , of the population , aud that is pre-oecupied m the main by the well-to-do classes . Nor is them any money to pay for proper ministration amongst the poor . A fund must be raised to the extcnt ° o £ 3 , 000 , 000 / . in order to pay the apostles . Another circle of gentlemen , with Lord Shaftcsbury at tlieir head , discover that tile true source of immorality is the ill ' construction of houses in town and country , and they proceed on a mission of amateur housebuilding on favourable terras ; but the movement is not upon the whole in very profitable circumstances . It is not much better off hi its exchequer than the Great Western Railway ; and if model ¦ . lodging-houses ' , languish upon a poor subscription , the lodging-houses that are the reverse of models , continue to draw immense rents from the
lowest classes of the population . Another circle takes a larger view-, and would purify the house from -without . With these gentlemen the rescue of the Thames from its disagreeable condition with a handsome drainage for London—upon "which they cannot agree— -is the true nostrum for the regeneration of the people . According to these several prcscribers , we are to find the recovery either from a new . system of drainage , from racrqed schools or
mechanics' institutes , from churches transported out of the City , or newly built with a recruitment of one thousand clergymen from the Band of Hope —when it shall grow up and forget any kind of -wine but the ?<« fcrniented juice of the grape , which , according to the Band of Hope , is the orthodox wine sanctioned by the Scriptures . Each of these nostrums is tried , but , it must be confessed , not on a scale commensurate with the want .
There is a higher class of rcgencrationists who object to these systematic efforts . Aurora Lci // / i , for example , inculcates the sublime doctrine that life must be developed from within . Having Hie sculpture entirely in her own hands , she is enabled to model the Lion or the Man as vanquishing at pleasure , and as she is the Lion she conquers ; licr cousin liomiiey being overthrown . Her talc lias a " happy ending , " with her own doctrinal victory , and the admonition to the world that if wo bogin by cultivating the life from within , we shall , by a process sfow i ) ut sureso rcccncrate , that life will
, become more and more beautiful , until it . iinaiiy becomes " amethyst ! " Au object no doubt most desirable to be attained , if one only had a chic to this ab inlrh process of improvement' These grander teachers would make us base the regeneration of our people , perhaps not altogether undul y * upon our becoming " moral ; " but they have not been precisely agreed as to what is " moral . They distract us all with conflicting injunctions . There is scarcely a branch of education , tectotnlisni ,
spu-itiuu-dcslitution-supnly , model lodg ing-liousiw , or even drainage , that ims not its Papist Jind » ' » Protestant dogmas . Mr . P . O . Ward represent * the High Church drainage , as Mr . T hwuitos a church so low that it ia almost Evangelical . Shall we * , then , wait to hope for tho improvement of our population from more " morality , " when wo have not settled what is moral and what is not P—tno moral of ono set of teachers being precisely the sin from wliich others warn us .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 14, 1858, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_14081858/page/14/
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