A single argument upon the question of the relations between debtor and creditor, which is maintained by the present laws, will be sufficient to illustrate the whole subject of customs, authorities and laws, which are obstructions in the path of progress. The time was when imprisonment for debt was authorized by law in all the States of this land of freedom (?); but the spirit of progressive justice has been at work until but few of the States now retain this libel upon Christian civilization to disgrace their statutes. Imprisonment for debt! What good ever resulted from it? The malignity of the creditor may have satisfied itself by still further humiliating the broken spirits of the debtor; but the creditor, by such action, places it still further beyond the power of the unfortunate debtor to satisfy the demand. It is asserted, without fear of successful contradiction, that the same deleterious effects generally flow from all similar laws. All kinds of crime are but species of debt, and the same rule applies with about the same force to its laws and penalties. Imprisonment for debt has been pretty generally abolished, but still our statute books are laden with laws to enforce collection.
A philosopher and economist, not long ago, fully investigated the relations between debtor and creditor, and the practical results of the laws now in force, and arrived at the “deliberate conclusion” that the costs attending the attempts to collect debts by legal process were three times the amount collected; not a very flattering commentary upon the policy of the law, and certainly not a paying investment to the crediting part of our community. This conclusion may at first thought appear fallacious; but when the expensiveness of courts, and the immense incomes of lawyers who practice at their bars, are considered, the afterthought will fully sustain the conclusion. It is believed by many that if there were no laws at all to enforce collection, there would be many less bad debts; even now a debt of honor is held by public opinion to have precedence of those which the law claims the right to enforce.
The thinker of ordinary capacity will see at a glance that an immense amount of labor would be withdrawn from the courts, which now bears heavily upon the people, not only in the form of taxes to pay for court-houses, jury-rooms and judges’ salaries, but in the waste of time employed in jury-boxes by men dragged from their inevitable toil, and held as prisoners, while their wives and children are often suffering, and even dying, from the want of their care and attention at home. Contracts should be so well defined as to admit of no misunderstanding; and if there was no method of collection and enforcement, there would be very many less disagreements; hence, in no light in which it can be viewed, does our present system commend itself to the wisdom and justice of the reflecting; on the contrary, it throws open the door for cunning and knavery to enter to test their strength through technical evasions and blind inferences, practiced, on the unwary and ignorant by the “Quirks, the Gammons and the Snaps,” who, as vampires of the time-honored profession they disgrace, feed and fatten upon the misfortunes of the deluded, long-forbearing, long-suffering children of toil.
It may be safely asserted that a very large part of all law contained within the statutes of the world, when analyzed, will present about the same deleterious results in practice and in the opportunities presented for infringement and subsequent evasion of their penalties that inevitably flow from all laws for the collection of debts.
The time has probably not yet come for the abolishment of all such laws, but the time has come when the relations of individual debtors and creditors should be left to the control of general principles of justice, which declare that a contract once fairly made, an obligation once fairly incurred, can never be discharged until satisfaction shall have been entered upon the record by divine justice.
TENDENCIES AND PROPHECIES OF THE PRESENT AGE.
[Revised from the American Workman of Oct. 30, 1870.]
NO. III.
When it is considered, how much the useful portion of life is dependent upon the preparatory part, the character of the influences brought to bear during that part, and the manner of their application, become a subject of deep importance. Education has received the most special attention from scholars, savants and professors; but they seem to have forgotten or to have ignored the fact that within the mind is contained the germ of all acquirements, and that teaching by rule merely what others have said or written, cramps and dwarfs the mind which, under a more natural system, would more rapidly and more healthfully develop its latent powers, through its stimulated efforts to evolve ideas connected with such facts and phenomena as may be exhibited to it, and thus become a part of the mind itself.
Instead of training the mind to rely upon method, books and authorities as rules, it should be encouraged to form methods of its own. The mind should be questioned, and its answers listened to, instead of being furnished by the teacher.