There is no getting away from the fact that political influences are against the abolition of imprisonment for debt. I remember many years ago--more than twenty, I fear--a learned County Court judge laughing at the eagerness with which I threw myself into a newspaper campaign against imprisonment for debt. "I, too," he said, "used to think I should live to see it abolished, and you think that merely stating unanswerable arguments against it is likely to lead to results. Well, I used to think that way about it at one time, but it is not a matter of argument at all; it is all a case of vested interests and nervous politicians. Some day another Lord Brougham will come along and sweep the thing away as he swept away the old Chancery Courts and many another legal abuse, but I shall never see it done, and unless you are another Methuselah you will never see it done." And then with a laugh of mock despair he added: Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul. I am beginning to think that my old friend spoke with the tongue of prophecy, and he was certainly right about the vested interests. The three parties in English politics have a curious attachment to imprisonment for debt. They do not allude to it much on the platform or in the House, but it is there at the back of their minds all the same. The Conservative opposition to the proposal is the more straightforward and natural. Here is a system which enables the well-to-do to collect money from the poor, it encourages credit giving, and is thought to promote trading, it causes no inconvenience to the wealthier classes, it exists and always has existed, and it works well. Why should it be altered, especially as there is no great demand for change, and change is in itself an evil thing? Let us leave well alone. The Liberal, off the platform, is much in agreement with the proposition of abolition, his difficulties are purely practical difficulties. He finds among his best supporters, drapers, grocers, tally-men and shop-keepers, most of them Nonconformists and keen Radicals, and all of them credit givers, carrying on their businesses under the sanction, more or less direct, of imprisonment for debt. These traders are not only voters and supporters, but they are centres of political influence. I remember in the South of England, thirty years ago, being told of a grocer in a small village who was a man whose support it was necessary for the candidate to obtain. I went along to see him and he agreed to support my friend. He was worth over two hundred votes, all of them in his debt and liable to be summoned at any moment for more than they could pay.