he nation, and no gain to the creditor. For of the
multitudes who are pining in those cells of misery, a very small part is
suspected of any fraudulent act by which they retain what belongs to
others. The rest are imprisoned by the wantonness of pride, the
malignity of revenge, or the acrimony of disappointed expectation.

If those, who thus rigorously exercise the power which the law has put
into their hands, be asked, why they continue to imprison those whom
they know to be unable to pay them; one will answer, that his debtor
once lived better than himself; another, that his wife looked above her
neighbours, and his children went in silk clothes to the dancing-school;
and another, that he pretended to be a joker and a wit. Some will reply,
that if they were in debt, they should meet with the same treatment;
some, that they owe no more than they can pay, and need therefore give
no account of their actions. Some will confess their resolution, that
their debtors shall rot in jail; and some will discover, that they hope,
by cruelty, to wring the payment from their friends.

The end of all civil regulations is to secure private happiness from
private malignity; to keep individuals from the power of one another;
but this end is apparently neglected, when a man, irritated with loss,
is allowed to be the judge of his own cause, and to assign the
punishment of his own pain; when the distinction between guilt and
happiness, between casualty and design, is intrusted to eyes blind with
interest, to understandings depraved by resentment.

Since poverty is punished among us as a crime, it ought at least to be
treated with the same lenity as other crimes; the offender ought not to
languish at the will of him whom he has offended, but to be allowed some
appeal to the justice of his country. There can be no reason why any
debtor should be imprisoned, but that he may be compelled to payment;
and a term should therefore be fixed, in which the creditor should
exhibit his accusation of concealed property. If such property can be
discovered, let it be given to the creditor; if the charge is not
offered, or cannot be proved, let the prisoner be dismissed.

Those who made the laws have apparently supposed, that every deficiency
of payment is the crime of the debtor. But the truth is, that the
creditor always shares the act, and often more than shares the guilt, of
improper trust. It seldom happens that any man imprisons another but for
de