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. Attornies fees amount to ten or fifteen pounds by suing a debtor to execution, and by making terms to avoid it as many shillings only; it is therefore absurd to suppose an attorney would advise an amicable adjustment. As I have in the course of these confused and indigested observations pointed out the several abuses of attornies and bailiffs, with their several remedies, I shall endeavour to shew the reason why these remedies remain unapplied, and why such atrocious offences escape the vigilance, energy, and force of so many statutes framed for their detection, and upon a strict enquiry we shall find the evil under two general heads.