Many Courts are occupied with sixty or more judgment summonses a month. The practical result of the working of the present system of imprisonment for debt is that persons of good position are very rarely committed. Nearly all the imprisoned debtors are very poor persons, and the amounts that they owe are very small, the average not exceeding £10. It is melancholy to see delicate, half-starved women, some of them with babies, come into Court after trudging miles in order to save their husbands, who perhaps have got a bit of work, from imprisonment.
Many judges are most careful and painstaking in their efforts to find out whether the debtors are, or are not, able to pay, while others perform these duties in a very perfunctory manner. In illustration of this it may be mentioned that in the year 1889, while one judge heard 2,256 judgment summonses and granted 855 warrants of commitment, another heard 1,220 judgment summonses and committed 1,043 persons to prison.
A FAIR DEFENDANT.
The statute gives the judge power to commit if satisfied that the debtor has means at the time when the order for imprisonment is sought, or has had means since the liability to pay was incurred. The latter provision permits the monstrous injustice that because six months ago a man had money that he was obliged to expend on the necessaries of life, he may be imprisoned for a debt previously contracted, and his family thereby deprived of the means of support.
It is a moot point whether imprisonment for debt might not with advantage be abolished altogether. The State has to keep the imprisoned debtor, whose wife perhaps has to go to the workhouse, a double burden thus being thrown on the public.
If there were no imprisonment for debt, people would certainly be more careful in giving credit, and a corresponding decrease in litigation would no doubt be the result.
The annual cost of the County Courts is about £566,000 and of this no less than £443,000 is provided by the suitors in fees and stamps. It is not consistent with the spirit in which justice should be administered that it should be paid for by the litigants. This was the view expressed by the County Court Commissioners, but no effect has been given to their opinion. There is no reason in justice or expediency why the County Court, the poor man's court, should be supported by the suitors themselves while the High Court, the rich man's court, is mainly paid for by the State.
DISCUSSING THE CASE.