venture and experiment.

"Fifth. From Boards of Trade, Chambers of Commerce and other
ornamental organizations who, being entirely uninformed on
the subject, permit themselves to become the conduits through
which the misrepresentation and animosity of avaricious creditors
and rapacious attorneys are discharged upon Congress and the
country."

I had moved in the Senate, in 1882, a bill favored by the
merchants and manufacturers of Massachusetts, which was largely
the work of Judge John Lowell, of the United States Circuit
Court, one of the most accomplished lawyers of his day, as
an amendment to a bill which Mr. Edmunds, Mr. Davis and Mr.
Ingalls had reported as a Subcommittee to the Senate Judiciary
Committee, and which had been reported from that Committee
to the Senate.

The Lowell Bill was on my motion substituted for the report
of the Judiciary Committee, by a majority of three. This
bill was extensively discussed in June and December. But
I was unable to secure its passage. It passed the Senate,
but it did not get through the House.

I have had the Parliamentary charge of all Bankruptcy measures
in the Senate from that time. After the failure of the Lowell
Bill, the Boards of Trade and Chambers of Commerce, and other
like associations throughout the country, took up the matter
very zealously by employing an able lawyer, the Hon. Jay
L. Torrey of Missouri, to present the matter in the two Houses
of Congress. He was thoroughly acquainted with the principles
and history of Bankruptcy laws in this country and England.
But he had no compromise in him. He insisted on the Bill
which he drew, which was a modification of the Lowell Bill,
without being willing to make any concession to objection
or difference of opinion in Congress, or out of it. He said
he would have a perfect law, or none at all. The measure
as he drew it was apparently very austere and harsh to the
debtor. It enumerated a large number of offences for which
the debtor was to be punished by fine and imprisonment, and
by a denial of his discharge. Mr. Torrey's provisions were
not very unreasonable. But they made it seem as if the Bill
were a penal code for the punishment of fraudulent debtors.
A simple provision that any debtor who wilfully should make
false answer to any question lawfully put to him by the Court,
or who wilfully concealed or attempted to conceal any property
from his assignee should lose his discharge and be punished
w