A spunging-house, in its present state, is as destructive to the principles of a man, as a brothel to the chastity of a woman; both enter with an equal degree of timidity and terror, and are seduced by similar stages of viciousness. The former, who held it a dishonour to delay payment of his bill with punctuality, will, after a month’s residence in a spunging-house, from hellish tenets and execrable examples, think it meritorious to cheat every creditor he has. The latter, who held the least obscenity offensive to her ear, will, from a like mode of seduction, and abominable examples, not only endure the sound, but court the substance. Most certain it is, that the seeds of vice are alike plentifully sown in these diabolical seminaries, and the hand of authority only can prevent its increase. But it appears, that these abuses committed by sheriffs officers are not wholly recent or local; for so long since as the year 1413 we find an act, in the first year of Henry the Fifth, to prevent abuses, extortions, and oppressions of bailiffs; which act runs thus: “Forasmuch as the king’s liege people dare not prosecute or complain of the extortions or oppressions to them done by the bailiffs of sheriffs, because that the said bailiffs of sheriffs be so continually year after year abiding with the sheriffs, interchangeably in one office or in another, our lord the king, by the advice and assent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and at the special instance and special request of the commons of this realm, hath ordained and established, That they who be Bailiffs or Sheriffs by one Year shall be in no such Office by three Years next following.”
But by this and a subsequent act the bailiffs of such sheriffs, whose sheriffwicks are inheritable, are excepted. Now the lord mayor and citizens of London have the sheriffalty of London and Middlesex in fee by charter; therefore the bailiffs come within the above exception. The acts themselves are affirmative, and the exception consequently leaves a negative pregnant, which gives the sheriff full power to discharge such bailiffs under sheriffwicks inheritable, as if the acts had made no exceptions.
A removal then of the officers, or at least the greatest part of them, is the first step towards a reformation; and the more effectually to eradicate the evil, as far as your power will extend, let them be replaced with men of moderate honesty and morality. Chuse them as you do other officers of less consequence, by ballot, election, &c. such a mode of choice will soon procure proper persons, and put the officers on a reputable footing. There is nothing dishonourable in the profession itself, more than in constable or any other minister of justice; the name of bailiff is become contemptible ONLY from a notion, that none are such but those totally destitute of every spark of humanity and honesty. Sheriffs themselves are royal officers of great dignity, taking place even of noblemen in the county during their sheriffalty. Can it then be supposed, that the immediate deputies of an officer, whom the law honours with a judicial and ministerial jurisdiction, almost to unlimited power, should be composed of men too infamous for any other employment, such [31] only as are excluded from all social and friendly societies of men? However it would be extremely unjust, and argue a want of candour and common charity, to indiscriminately confound the good with the bad, or make the whole answerable for the crimes of a part.
Amidst such a body of men, it is to be hoped that exceptions are not wanting; but I will venture to say, that those exceptions will chiefly be found in the serjeants at mace, some of whom have been reputable tradesmen, and still retain a memory of their own misfortunes, which serves to keep the faculties of feeling and humanity in a proper circulation, and makes them view the precipice from which they fell through the miseries of others.
But as it does not become my purpose or province to select the guilty from the innocent, I will leave them to stand justified by their own works, as they pass your more critical observation; all I contend for at present, is the Veracity of this short Narrative, in which I have not related or alluded to a single Transaction but I can authenticate with aggravating Circumstances. Let then the proof of past Injuries be my Task, a Prevention of the future yours. From the foregoing observations we may fairly conclude, that the present mode of holding the person of house-keepers in trade to bail, is no more beneficial to creditors than reputable to debtors, even supposing such arrest to be thoroughly consonant with the law of the land.
But to quit the legality, and turn to the equity and policy of confining the body of a debtor. There can be no reason given agreeable to humanity or christianity, why one party only should be punished for a crime, if two concur in the guilt. The creditor that gives improper credit, with a view of exorbitant gain, meets the debtor half way in the fraud by the very act of trust. In the former it is premeditated fraud and avarice, in the latter rashness and folly. It is for his own sake that the creditor gives credit, and his hope of advantage begets a confidence in the creditor. As the contract or cause is mutual, so ought the consequence.
We have seen one generation after another imprisoned for debts they could not pay; and experience daily teaches, that a prison, so far from affording a creditor’s demand, shuts up, with the debtor, every hope of recovering it. Why then should we pursue the remedy without a benefit? If the debtor has property, take it, and the end of arrest is fully answered. If no such property is to be found, the want of it can be no consolation to the debtor; and it is inhuman to add affliction on the back of misfortunes.
If we search the prisons through, it will appear, that a vast majority of prisoners are such from the villanies of attornies, the injustice of creditors, or from a disability to pay such debts as ought not, from the nature of their contract, to be paid. The just, fair, and honest man seldom imprisons his debtor for a want of abilities so much as for want of inclination. In the latter case, imprisonment is too slender a punishment for the offence, in the former too harsh and severe.
I am not so liberty-bit as to contend for it in behalf of a man, who has wasted his creditors substance by every act of dissipation and profligacy; but there certainly ought to be a line drawn between the fraudulent and honest debtor: the one merits a more exemplary correction than the laws inflict, the other claims not only the law’s protection, but the aid of humanity.
The misery attending debtors would be often avoided, if creditors would DEIGN to see and treat with them, instead of sending an attorney, whose hearts in general are not made of penetrable stuff; to hope for mercy from them, is putting your finger in the fire and begging it not to burn.