From the foregoing matter, which is derived for the most part from the report of the Select Committee (constantly referred to in this chapter), it will be seen that imprisonment for debt is by no means generally supported, either by the judges themselves or by those persons associated with judicial administration. Tradesmen of the inferior type support imprisonment with fearful anxiety lest it be abolished. To them, it makes a debt a lever for persecution. Indeed, it is used as a method of _quasi_-blackmail against the debtor of the lower classes. Take the unwary working-man in regular employ. He contracts a debt--he may even be persuaded into it--and the first thing he knows is its maturity into a county court judgment, followed by an order to pay (so much at stated intervals until the debt is liquidated). The man is informed that he will be sent to prison unless he finds the money. He is thus coerced and terrified by the debt-collector, until he suffers himself and those dependent upon him to go without food to meet the payments. The menaces used to bring this state about would not come within the meaning of blackmail, legally, but they savour so strongly of it in practice that “imprisonment for debt” becomes an injustice and an anomaly of the law. Imprisonment for whatever cause and for whatever time is imprisonment, and in the working-man’s mind lies the certainty that his employer, when the latter hears of it, will discharge him forthwith. The tangled terrors of his predicament are worked upon by the debt-collector, a person, we may assume, of even greater persistency than his prototype who pursues the debtor of the upper class. The Select Committee, though it did not actually recommend the abolition of imprisonment for debt, was only luke-warm in its endorsement of the measure. Many county court judges state definitely that they will not inflict the penalty, for that it is a penalty, and a very serious penalty, cannot be gainsaid. It would be absurd to suggest that all credit would fall apart in the event of the abolition of imprisonment for debt. Indeed, except among the “instalment-system” creditors who prey on the poorer classes, there is no reason to suppose that credit would be affected to a material extent by such a change. As a whole, imprisonment for debt can be labelled a legal fiction. It is imprisonment for debt, and yet, more strictly, perhaps, it is a committal for contempt of court. The terms in this respect are interchangeable. The root of the trouble is debt.