of the system of jurisprudence, and
appears to be a very desirable object of solicitude. For want of
some legal system of this kind, many families have been reduced
to the lowest extremes of misery and want, the heads being
immured in prison, without the ability to liquidate the claims of
their unfeeling creditors, or to provide support for their
perishing families. The necessary consequence was, the
individuals fell to the charge of the government, since they must
not be suffered to starve. The obduracy of the creditors may be
assigned as the sole cause of this wretchedness; for although, in
such circumstances, the unfortunate debtor had been willing to
relinquish all his possessions; to surrender his land, his
cattle, his stock, and every thing else of which he could boast
of the possession; nothing short of payment in money could
satisfy; and the ill-fated was doomed to experience the
accumulated horrors of personal suffering, in addition to that
which must arise from the idea that his sorrows extended
themselves, with equal or superior bitterness, to those who were
dear to him. Such occurrences as these have tended to multiply
considerably the expenses of government, who have frequently
found it necessary to extend their assistance to the whole of the
unfortunate debtor's family, to preserve them from actual
destruction; and who could not, by any authority which was vested
in them, compel the hard-hearted and inhuman creditor to accede
to the only proposal which it was in the ability of the prisoner
to offer. The introduction of the bankrupt laws could not fail to
afford an effectual relief to persons reduced to this unfortunate
condition, and must be productive of much future benefit, in
consequence of the continual augmentation of the trade of the
settlement, and the increasing numbers of the dealers;
circumstances of themselves which must carry to every rational
mind the strong necessity which exists for the adoption and
introduction of some legal code, assimilated as much as possible
to the bankrupt laws of the mother country, if it should be
considered imprudent to copy precisely after this exquisite
model.

The encouragement of a few barristers to go over to the
settlement, who have not met with success adequate to their
wishes in the mother country, but who are, notwithstanding,
persons of unimpeached moral character (for nothing could be more
impolitic in any case than to import persons of doubtful
cha