opportunity to debtors,

(1) To evade the force of the act by ways and shifts to avoid the
power of it, and secure their estates out of the reach of it.

(2) To turn the point of it against those whom it was made to
relieve. Since we see frequently now that bankrupts desire
statutes, and procure them to be taken out against themselves.

2. Whether the extremities of this law are not often carried on
beyond the true intent and meaning of the act itself by persons who,
besides being creditors, are also malicious, and gratify their
private revenge by prosecuting the offender, to the ruin of his
family.

If these two points are to be proved, then I am sure it will follow
that this act is now a public grievance to the nation, and I doubt
not but will be one time or other repealed by the same wise
authority which made it.

1. Time and experience has furnished the debtors with ways and
means to evade the force of this statute, and to secure their estate
against the reach of it, which renders it often insignificant, and
consequently, the knave against whom the law was particularly bent
gets off, while he only who fails of mere necessity, and whose
honest principle will not permit him to practise those methods, is
exposed to the fury of this act. And as things are now ordered,
nothing is more easy than for a man to order his estate so that a
statute shall have no power over it, or at least but a little.