The Law and the Poor

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in the forefront of any consideration of the problem of the law and the poor, because to my mind it is a c

ebtor seems to me to possess all the necessary legal incidents in him through which one can give an excellent object lesson on the law and the poor. There is no legal mystery about a debtor; he is a common object of our legal seashore, as ancient of lineag

the continued existence, of imprisonment for debt, and its evil effect on right action, conduct and social life, and you will find it easier to diagnose the more obscure legal diseases which are partially the outcome and partially the cause of much real distress among the poor. Carlyle tells us to "e

cause he does not pay his neighbour what he owes him. I propose, therefore, before I set down exactly what we are doing to-day, to trace the pedigree of our present system of dealing with debtors and show you historically and cinematographically, as it were, how the

are many poor widows in the mean streets of our own cities looking down the road for the Elisha of to-day who cometh not. Miracles do not happen nowadays; people don't do such things. Still i

pened wa

ria, went with a body-warrant to seize the two sons of a poor widow on

of their congregations and also no doubt to show the contempt he had for the proceedings of the County Court of Samaria, sent the widow out to borrow empty vessels of her neighbours. These he miraculously filled with oil of the best, and t

chapels, and I am not surprised. A minister who preached about it would have to explain that he could not do miracles of that kind himself, and if he were to do the next best thing and preach about the iniquity of imprisonment f

what he thought about imprisonment for debt, by means of a miracle, surely, after all thes

ailiffs come for their bodies on behalf of their creditors st

the forgiveness of our debtors is a condition precedent to our own forgiveness, most of us are in a parlous state. But is it too much in this Christian country of ours to suggest that, even if the highest ideals of

ith to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made. Note that in those days the wife and children were actually sold into slaver

by compassion, released him and forgave him the debt. This is important to remember, for the servant being forgiven his debt was without excuse for his subsequent contemptible conduct. And, indeed, I have often found that men who have been most leniently treated in t

low servant with such jubilant audacity. Nowadays everything would be done in legal decency and order. The debt being for a hundred pence, and, therefore, being within the jurisdiction of the County Court, a summons would have to be issued, fees would have to be paid to the Treasury and the Court officials, and a lot of money spent and added to the debt before imprisonmen

world was a drab uncomfortable place. But the ancient dramatic stories always have a happy ending. There is more of the spirit of the old Adelphi than of the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, about the parable

deration for the forgiveness, it was nudum pactum, or there may have been an implied contract that the servant should do unto others as he had been done by, but I rather expect the lord and his advisers only consi

that anyone should make use of holy words to upset a system that they find so useful in the commercial weekdays of life. Moreover, some will shake their heads and remind me that

less compelling sanction, will perhaps have more weight with men of the world. In the history

Archon I refe

nished his substance by prodigality," and young Solon had to go into business; in modern phrase, he "went on the road," and saw a lot of the world in Greece and Asia. I mention this because I am always told that if I knew anything of business I should understand the necessity of imprisonm

ticularly the cultivating tenants, weighed down by debts and driven in large numbers out of freedom and into

an to sell himself as well as that of another man to buy him. Every debtor unable to fulfil his contract was liable to be adjudged as the slave of his creditor, until he could find means either of paying it or working it out; and not only he himself

iple of all imprisonment for debt. A wage earner to-day who runs up bills

dy." In the north country, among the more old-fashioned bailiffs and their victims, warrants of arrest are commonly known as "body warrants." No doubt the imprisonment of to-day is different in degree from the slavery of debtors in Greece f

mportant to us, what he did. Solon had a pretty wit in titles. He called his bill Seisachtheia, or the shaking off of burdens. The relief which it afforded was complete and immediate. It cancelled at once all those contracts in which the debtor had borrowed on the security of his person or his land; it

seized for debt. This is akin to what in some of our colonies is called a homestead law, and I have always contended that in the interests of the State the few sticks of furniture which a poor m

y of moneylending, assumed a more beneficial character, and "the old noxious contracts, mere snares for the liberty of a poor free man and his children"-the flat-traps of to-day-disappeared. What happened was what will happen here when we abolish this degrading system of giving credit on the sanction of body warrants. What happened in Athens was that, although there were some fraudulent debtors, the public sentiment became strongly in favour of honesty, and it is agreed that the prophecies of Solon's failure were not mad

ay armchair of State must be a far, far better thing than anything that obtained in Ancient Greece. Possibly, the world having no use at all for Solons, the type is extinct. Be that as it may, I am more than ever puzzled since I have studied the record

ring which time he had to bring the debtor out on three successive market days to give his friends an opportunity of paying up and releasing him. The creditor had also to provide the debtor with a pound of bread a day. In these socialist days we take that burden off the creditor's shoulder and a generous State feeds the imprisoned debtor at the cost of the community. On the third market day, if the deb

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one that cuts more or less than his just share shall be guiltless." Unless, therefore, the laws of Venice amended or repealed the Twelve Tables, Shylock's case seems to have been wrongly decided

ans to pay their creditors. The difference between killing and imprisoning a debtor is a difference in degree only. The principle is the same. The object of the creditor is, perhaps, in the first place, to get repaid his debt; when he finds this is impossible the death or imprisonment of the debtor merely satisfies his

we do to-day when we issue execution against chattels. In later years the slavery of debtors was abolished and imprisonment much like our own was substituted, but the Romans never had a lawgiver as wise and powerful as Solon to get rid of imprisonment for debt altogether. And the Roman imprisonment for debt in some shape or other runs

d relieve many a poor wretch in misery and despair. "If," he writes, "a man be cast into prison for debt, the judges after the manner visiting frequently those prisons, finding him to be poor, will impose upon the creditor a mitigation of the debt, or time of forbearance, as they

for civil debt, rates, maintenance or bastardy orders and small fines are too poor to pay. Yet here in England our legislators cannot even get as far as the Papal State of the sixteenth century in an exercise of charity to the poor and distressed. Pendi

e law, it is necessary to trace clearly and accurately the evolution of imprisonment for debt in England, in or