ind, and these were the
arrears which the tenants acknowledged.

The method of the overseer is short and simple: apart from
considerations of morality, conscience, and divine retribution, it
seemed a short road to the accomplishment of his purpose. He surrendered
to the debtors their obligations, and received in return obligations for
smaller amounts, in one case for fifty, and in another for eighty,
instead of a hundred. These two cases are submitted as specimens: others
were treated in a similar way. Of course the steward could not obtain
from these debtors any obligation in his own favour for the portion
remitted, which could be enforced in a court of justice; for the proof
of the claim on the one side would have revealed his guilt on the
other: but it was assumed between the parties that the benefit conferred
should in due time be substantially acknowledged and repaid. The steward
counted that in the day of his distress those men on whom he had
conferred favours would receive him into their houses.[88]

[88] Of the same nature were the long leases of ecclesiastical
property in England at low rents, granted by the living incumbents,
in consideration of a sum of money in name of fine paid to
themselves.

It was expected, moreover, that the proprietor, or the steward whom he
might afterwards employ, could not exact more than the smaller sums, for
which they possessed the acknowledgments of the parties. We could indeed
conceive a case in which the injured owner could lead a proof of fraud
in the transaction, and enforce from the obligants the original amounts;
but it is not probable that, in an age when records were defective, and
the two parties immediately connected with the fraudulent transaction
deeply interested in concealing it, such a suit could be successfully
carried through.[89]

[89] A case emerged lately in the courts of this country, in which a
proprietor, who had lost very large sums by the unfaithfulness of
his agent, prosecuted the parties for restitution, on the ground of
the agent's bad faith in the transactions. The case was protracted,
and I lost sight of it before the solution was reached; but it is
enough for my present purpose that a plea was actually raised to
obtain from one debtor the price of a hundred measures of oil
instead of fifty, which he acknowledged, on the alleged ground that
the absconded steward had corruptly and for his own interest
sacrificed the