[19] “Our legal system is apt to give wholly disproportionate importance to a large class of libel and slander actions intrinsically of small account. We provide first-rate machinery for the determination of second-rate or even trumpery questions; disputes not much above the level of those which a County Court judge settles once for all in a rough and ready manner in ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. It is true that there are libels of a cruel and malignant character, more mischievous than most crimes; calumnies industriously circulated as to the private lives of innocent men and women; fictions or distortions of facts for which no punishment is excessive. For such libels the criminal law is the proper remedy. But for a large mass of libels and slanders which engage the time of High Court judges and special juries the legal machinery provided, criminal or civil, is altogether out of proportion to their importance.”--_The Times._ CHAPTER V IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT Imprisonment for debt, laughable enough, perhaps, in an eighteenth-century comedy, is something of an anomaly in the existing state of justice. Some ten thousand persons annually go to prison for debt, or, rather, for contempt of court, arising in connection with the disobedience of an order of the court to pay a certain sum of money on a judgment. Of course, credit forms a large field for discussion. It is essential in all communities, among all classes of the population. How it comes into being and how it justifies its existence are questions of more than ordinary interest. In the first place, a man who lives at the rate of a thousand or two a year inevitably has credit given to him unasked. It is a part and parcel of daily life, convenient, if not necessary, in his case. Tradesmen are paid in the usual course of events and matters go tranquilly onwards. If, by mischance, the source of his income suddenly, unexpectedly even, comes to an end, how does he stand? He may owe two hundred pounds or two thousand. His credit has merely been the outcome of custom, usage, not of fraud, or of intention to defraud. Had his intentions been fraudulent, he would have “pushed” his credit far beyond the sum of two thousand pounds, which is merely an extravagant sum for a man with an income ranging from one to two thousand pounds _per annum_. But the two thousand pounds which he owes are, through his abrupt loss of income, a grave menace. If the sum is greatly divided up, his life may be made tormenting, for when a debtor is in difficulties, though they may have arisen through no fault of his own, it is the psychological moment for some creditors, most creditors, to deluge him with writs and summonses--a senseless system in the circumstances--and to pursue him with regiments of solicitors’ office boys, professional debt-collectors and officials from the county court. (The demeanour of these claimants generally savours of mixed brazenness