I received it, I applied to the Solicitor, now the
Attorney General, to give it an immediate consideration; and he most
obligingly and instantly consented to employ a great deal of his very
valuable time to write an explanation of the bill. I attended the
committee with all possible care and diligence, in order that every
objection of yours might meet with a solution, or produce an alteration.
I entreated your learned recorder (always ready in business in which you
take a concern) to attend. But what will you say to those who blame me
for supporting Lord Beauchamp's bill, as a disrespectful treatment of
your petition, when you hear, that, out of respect to you, I myself was
the cause of the loss of that very bill? For the noble lord who brought
it in, and who, I must say, has much merit for this and some other
measures, at my request consented to put it off for a week, which the
Speaker's illness lengthened to a fortnight; and then the frantic
tumult about Popery drove that and every rational business from the
House. So that, if I chose to make a defence of myself, on the little
principles of a culprit, pleading in his exculpation, I might not only
secure my acquittal, but make merit with the opposers of the bill. But I
shall do no such thing. The truth is, that I did occasion the loss of
the bill, and by a delay caused by my respect to you. But such an event
was never in my contemplation. And I am so far from taking credit for
the defeat of that measure, that I cannot sufficiently lament my
misfortune, if but one man, who ought to be at large, has passed a year
in prison by my means. I am a debtor to the debtors. I confess judgment.
I owe what, if ever it be in my power, I shall most certainly
pay,--ample atonement and usurious amends to liberty and humanity for my
unhappy lapse. For, Gentlemen, Lord Beauchamp's bill was a law of
justice and policy, as far as it went: I say, as far as it went; for its
fault was its being in the remedial part miserably defective.

There are two capital faults in our law with relation to civil debts.
One is, that every man is presumed solvent: a presumption, in
innumerable cases, directly against truth. Therefore the debtor is
ordered, on a supposition of ability and fraud, to be coerced his
liberty until he makes payment. By this means, in all cases of civil
insolvency, without a pardon from his creditor, he is to be imprisoned
for life; and thus a miserable mistaken invention of artifi