The barbarity of the system, its futility, because the debtor was deprived of the means of making money to pay his debts, withal, were exposed over and over again: prisoners wrote accounts of their prisons: commissions held inquiry into the management of the prisons: regulations were laid down: Acts were passed to release debtors by hundreds at one time: the system of allowing prisoners to live in 'Rules' was tolerated: but the real evil remained untouched so long as a creditor had the power of imprisoning a debtor. The power was abused in the most monstrous manner: a man owed a few shillings: he could not pay: he was put into prison: the next day he discovered that he was in debt to an attorney for as many pounds. If he owed as much as 10_l._, the bill against him for his arrest amounted to 11_l._ 15_s._ 8_d._ of what we should now call 'taxed costs.' In the year 1759 there were 20,000 prisoners for debt in Great Britain and Ireland. Think what that means: all those were in enforced idleness. Why, their work at 2_s._ a day means 600,000_l._ a year: all that wealth lost to the State: nay more, because they were mostly married men with families: their families had to be maintained, so that not only did the country lose 600,000_l._ a year by the idleness of the debtors, it also lost that much again for the maintenance of their families. Put it in another way. A poor man knowing one trade which one cannot practise in a prison owed, say, 15_s._ He was arrested and put into prison. He lived there for thirty years. He lived on doles and the proceeds of the begging box, and what his friends could give him: he lived, say, on five shillings a week. He cost some one therefore; the charitable people who dropped money into the box; the community; for his maintenance in the prison, and for thirty years of it, the sum total of 400_l._ This is rather an expensive tax on the State: but the tradesman to whom he owed the money considered no more than his own 15_s._ In addition there were his wife and children to keep until the latter were self-supporting. This charge represented perhaps another 400_l._ But there were 20,000 debtors in prison. If they were all in like evil case, the State was taxed on their behalf in the sum of sixteen millions spread over thirty years, or half a million a year, because these luckless creatures could not pay an insignificant debt of a few shillings or a few pounds.