In order to wile away time, our merchant, who was wonderfully social, scraped acquaintance with some of his fellow-prisoners. "Vat be you in prishon for?" said he to a stout respectable-looking man who seemed in a violent passion—"for vhat crime?"
"I, Sir, crime!" quoth the prisoner; "Sir, I was going to Liverpool to vote at the election, when a friend of the opposite candidate had me suddenly arrested for 2,000l. Before I get bail the election will be over!"
"Vat's that you tell me? arrest you to prevent your giving an honesht vote? is that justice?"
"Justice, no!" cried our friend, it's the Law of Arrest."
"And vat be you in prishon for?" said the merchant pityingly to a thin cadaverous-looking object, who ever and anon applied a handkerchief to eyes that were worn with weeping.
"An attorney offered a friend of mine to discount a bill, if he could obtain a few names to indorse it—I, Sir, indorsed it. The bill became due, the next day the attorney arrested all whose names were on the bill; there were eight of us, the law allows him to charge two guineas for each; there are sixteen guineas, Sir, for the lawyer—but I, Sir—alas my family will starve before I shall be released. Sir, there are a set of men called discounting attorneys, who live upon the profits of entrapping and arresting us poor folk."
"Mine Gott! but is dat justice?"
"Alas! No, Sir, it is the law of arrest."
"But," said the merchant, turning round to a lawyer, whom the Devil had deserted, and who was now with the victims of his profession; "dey tell me, dat in Englant a man be called innoshent till he be proved guilty; but here am I, who, because von carrion of a shailor, who owesh me five hundred pounts, takes an oath that I owe him ten thousand—here am I, on that schoundrel's single oath, clapped up in a prishon. Is this a man's being innoshent till he is proved guilty, Sare?"
"Sir," said the lawyer primly, "you are thinking of criminal cases; but if a man be unfortunate enough to get into debt, that is quite a different thing:—we are harder to poverty than we are to crime!"