The common feeling respecting debtors and creditors is very erroneous, and, as is common with popular fallacies, it imposes with double force upon the young and inexperienced. Debtors are represented in all works of fiction, and in the ordinary language of a large portion of society, as a set of amiable, unfortunate, and most interesting persons: Creditors, on the other hand, as an unmingled generation of execrable wretches, with a hardness of heart that would not disgrace an executioner, and indeed only one remove from another stony class of men, the much misrepresented jailers. Now, the person who writes this article has known many debtors and creditors, and he can say that, in by far the most of cases, the latter were the better class of men. He alludes, of course, not to commercial men at large, who are in their own persons, in general, as much of the one thing as the other, but to cases where the creditor is a tradesman, and the debtor a customer; that is, where the debt is not incurred in the intercourse of business, but for the personal use and benefit of the debtor. In these cases, so far from the creditor being an unfeeling and relentless tyrant, as he is generally represented, he is only the indignant victim of the imprudence or guilt of the debtor. The latter may be an amiable and interesting person, for we often find these characteristics united to consummate folly and disregard of the rights of others. But the young must beware how they set down debtors, in a class, as purely estimable and entitled to sympathy, while they at the same time look upon creditors as only ruthless persecutors, worthy of the bitterest execration. They may depend upon it, that no notion could be more erroneous, no error more apt to be fatal to them in their course through life. They must be informed that to incur debt for their own gratifications, without the ability to discharge it, is just another thing for selling themselves as slaves to their creditors. After doing so, they are no longer entirely free: part of themselves becomes the property of another, and thus they lose the respect of the world, which cannot see one man indulge in enjoyments at the expense of his fellow, without thinking of him very meanly. The incurring of debt for personal gratification is odious, for many reasons. In the first place, it violates that rule of nature which appoints every man to work for himself, and only enjoy as he works. It also tends to occasion the ruin of innocent persons. Creditors are not invariably rich, as one would suppose them to be, from reading novels. They are more frequently poor, industrious persons, who, in losing money by their debtors, are apt to be made debtors themselves, and thereby ruined. In fact, the case stands generally thus: An idle or extravagant person procures support for his bad appetites, and is enabled to show himself off as a very fine fellow, at the expense of a humble-minded honest trader,