If I may be allowed so much liberty with our laws, which are
generally good, and above all things are tempered with mercy,
lenity, and freedom, this has something in it of barbarity; it gives
a loose to the malice and revenge of the creditor, as well as a
power to right himself, while it leaves the debtor no way to show
himself honest. It contrives all the ways possible to drive the
debtor to despair, and encourages no new industry, for it makes him
perfectly incapable of anything but starving.

This law, especially as it is now frequently executed, tends wholly
to the destruction of the debtor, and yet very little to the
advantage of the creditor.

1. The severities to the debtor are unreasonable, and, if I may so
say, a little inhuman, for it not only strips him of all in a
moment, but renders him for ever incapable of helping himself, or
relieving his family by future industry. If he escapes from prison,
which is hardly done too, if he has nothing left, he must starve or
live on charity; if he goes to work no man dare pay him his wages,
but he shall pay it again to the creditors; if he has any private
stock left for a subsistence he can put it nowhere; every man is
bound to be a thief and take it from him; if he trusts it in the
hands of a friend he must receive it again as a great courtesy, for
that friend is liable to account for it. I have known a poor man
prosecuted by a statute to that degree that all he had left was a
little money which he knew not where to hide; at last, that he might
not starve, he gives it to his brother who had entertained him; the
brother, after he had his money quarrels with him to get him out of
his house, and when he desires him to let him have the money lent
him, gives him this for answer, I cannot pay you safely, for there