your family. I cannot see why any man should think I am bound in
conscience to pay the extravagance of other men. If my creditors
spend 500 pounds in getting in my estate by a statute, which I
offered to surrender without it, I'll reckon that 500 pounds paid
them, let them take it among them, for equity is due to a bankrupt
as well as to any man, and if the laws do not give it us, we must
take it."

This is too rational discourse not to please him, and he proceeds by
this advice; the creditors cannot agree, but take out a statute; and
the man that offered at first it may be 10s. in the pound, is kept
in that cursed place till he has spent it all and can offer nothing,
and then gets away beyond sea, or after a long consumption gets off
by an act of relief to poor debtors, and all the charges of the
statute fall among the creditors. Thus I knew a statute taken out
against a shopkeeper in the country, and a considerable parcel of
goods too seized, and yet the creditors, what with charges and two
or three suits at law, lost their whole debts and 8s. per pound
contribution money for charges, and the poor debtor, like a man
under the surgeon's hand, died in the operation.

2. Another evil that time and experience has brought to light from
this act is, when the debtor himself shall confederate with some
particular creditor to take out a statute, and this is a masterpiece
of plot and intrigue. For perhaps some creditor honestly received
in the way of trade a large sum of money of the debtor for goods
sold him when he was sui juris, and he by consent shall own himself
a bankrupt before that time, and the statute shall reach back to
bring in an honest man's estate, to help pay a rogue's debt. Or a
man shall go and borrow a sum of money upon a parcel of goods, and