order accordingly), unless he appears.... Witness opposes a suggestion that imprisonment be held to purge a debtor of the amount for which he was imprisoned.” Judge Edward Bray favours, in his evidence, the abolition of imprisonment. He opposes “the present system as prejudicial to the interests of the working classes on account of the enormous and expensive and indiscriminate credit which they can obtain.” Sir Kenelm Digby, G.C.B., at one time a County Court Judge on Circuit No. 19, favours the limitation of the power of imprisonment, but he considers its abolition impracticable as abolishing credit. Judge Cyril Dodd, Circuit No. 16, stated in his evidence that he desired the abolition of imprisonment for debt; he also recommended the widening of the present definition of crime. Judge John Gent, County Court Circuit No. 12, favoured, under certain conditions, the abolition of imprisonment for debt. “He would retain imprisonment for debt,” so the report goes, “in fiduciary cases and for default by a solicitor in payment of money when he has been ordered to pay the same, also for default in bankruptcy, taking other cases of fraudulent debt into the criminal courts. He reprobates the payment by results of registrars as putting an obstacle in the way of judges who conscientiously try to restrict the issue of committal orders, by placing them in an invidious position of responsibility for the reduction of the salaries of the registrar and his staff. He instanced his own feelings on finding that he had been the means of reducing the salary of the registrar at Huddersfield £200 or £300.... He thinks registrars favour the present system.... Witness disapproves of credit as vicious, and unnecessary, even in bad times, when the poor, he thinks, would be wiser to accept charitable assistance. He believes credit to be mainly given on the power of imprisonment in reserve.... Witness thinks the requirements as to proof of means difficult to work and unsatisfactory, the Court of Appeal having decided that ‘means to pay’ are means to pay after the discharge by a debtor of his obligation of family maintenance.” Judge Henry Best Hans Hamilton, of Circuit 4, opposed, before the Select Committee, the abolition of imprisonment, “as likely to swell the numbers of improvident working men, and, by increasing the difficulties of obtaining the credit necessary in bad times, throw both the honourable and the improvident on the workhouse or parish at such seasons. He considers execution against goods (generally claimed by relatives or obtained on the hire system) useless against the improvident or dishonest.” Judge Arthur O’Connor, K.C., of County Court Circuit No. 2, “approves the power of imprisonment as a necessary instrument in securing payment of judgment debts which would otherwise remain unpaid.”