ant to the lender._ Debt is a rigorous
servitude. The debtor learns the cunning tricks, delays, concealments, and
frauds, by which slaves evade or cheat their master. He is tempted to make
ambiguous statements; pledges, with secret passages of escape; contracts,
with fraudulent constructions; lying excuses, and more mendacious
promises. He is tempted to elude responsibility; to delay settlements; to
prevaricate upon the terms; to resist equity, and devise specious fraud.
When the eager creditor would restrain such vagrancy by law, the debtor
then thinks himself released from moral obligation, and brought to a legal
game, in which it is lawful for the best player to win. He disputes true
accounts; he studies subterfuges; extorts provocatious delays; and harbors
in every nook, and corner, and passage, of the law's labyrinth. At length
the measure is filled up, and the malignant power of debt is known. It has
opened in the heart every fountain of iniquity; it has besoiled the
conscience; it has tarnished the honor; it has made the man a deliberate
student of knavery; a systematic practitioner of fraud; it has dragged him
through all the sewers of petty passions,--anger, hate, revenge, malicious
folly, or malignant shame. When a debtor is beaten at every point, and the
law will put her screws upon him, there is no depth in the gulf of
dishonesty into which he will not boldly plunge. Some men put their
property to the flames, assassinate the detested creditor, and end the
frantic tragedy by suicide, or the gallows. Others, in view of the
catastrophe, have converted all property to cash, and concealed it. The
law's utmost skill, and the creditor's fury, are alike powerless
now,--the tree is green and thrifty; its roots drawing a copious supply
from some hidden fountain.

Craft has another harbor of resort for the piratical crew of dishonesty;
viz.: _putting the property out of the law's reach by a fraudulent
conveyance_. Whoever runs in debt, and consumes the equivalent of his
indebtedness; whoever is fairly liable to damage for broken contracts;
whoever by folly, has incurred debts and lost the benefit of his outlay;
whoever is legally obliged to pay for his malice or carelessness; whoever
by infidelity to public trusts has made his property a just remuneration
for his defaults;--whoever of all these, or whoever, under any
circumstances, puts out of his hands property, morally or legally due to
creditors, is A DISHONEST MAN.