tage of commerce, an
imprisoned debtor was not left entirely at the mercy of an inexorable
creditor. If he made all the satisfaction in his power, and could show
that his insolvency was owing to real misfortunes, the court of chancery
interposed on his petition, and actually ordered him to be discharged
from prison, when no good reason for detaining him could be assigned.
This interposition, which seems naturally to belong to a court of
equity, constituted with a view to mitigate the rigour of the common
law, ceased, in all probability after the restoration of Charles the
Second, and of consequence the prisons were filled with debtors. Then
the legislature charged themselves with the extension of a power, which
perhaps a chancellor no longer thought himself safe in exercising; and
in the year one thousand six hundred and seventy, passed the first act
for the relief of insolvent debtors, granting a release to all prisoners
for debt, without distinction or inquiry. By this general indulgence,
which has even in a great measure continued in all subsequent acts of
the same kind, the lenity of the parliament may be sometimes misapplied,
inasmuch as insolvency is often criminal, arising from profligacy and
extravagance, which deserve to be severely punished. Yet, even for
this species of insolvency, perpetual imprisonment, aggravated by the
miseries of extreme indigence, and the danger of perishing through
famine, may be deemed a punishment too severe. How cruel then must it be
to leave the most innocent bankrupt exposed to this punishment, from the
revenge or sinister design of a merciless creditor; a creditor, by whose
fraud the prisoner became a bankrupt, and by whoso craft he is detained
in gaol, lest by his discharge from prison, he should be enabled to seek
that redress in chancery to which he is entitled on a fair account! The
severity of the law was certainly intended against fraudulent bankrupts
only; and the statute of bankruptcy is, doubtless, favourable to
insolvents, as it discharges from all former debts those who obtained
their certificates. As British subjects, they are surely entitled to the
same indulgence which is granted to other insolvents. They were always
included in every act passed for the relief of insolvent debtors, till
the sixth year of George I. when they were first excepted from this
benefit. By a law enacted in the reign of queen Anne, relating to
bankruptcy, any creditor was at liberty to object