The reformer must always expect to find selfish class interests up against him, but it seems to me that the desires of those who want to finance strikes on credit and the rights of those who at present are selling shoddy on credit at extravagant prices ought not to weigh against the general public welfare. If, as I venture to think, the arguments against the last step in the abolition of imprisonment for debt are as valid as they were on former occasions, and if, as must be admitted, no evils have followed on the partial abolitions of imprisonment already made in 1837 and 1869, then the mere fact that the public is apathetic on the subject and that members of Parliament are apprehensive of interested opposition is not of itself sufficient excuse for those who are in authority in legal matters refusing to complete the reform by abolishing imprisonment for debt for the poor as it has already been abolished for the rich. Of course, the mere abolition of imprisonment for debt would not to my mind be a sufficient protection of the poor unless side by side of it were enacted a homestead law greatly enlarging the existing exemptions from execution of the tools and chattels of a working man. The idea is that the home furniture necessary to the lives of the human beings forming the home should be incapable of being seized for debt. Make the limit twenty pounds or whatever sum you please but clearly enact that sufficient chattels to furnish a reasonable house are exempt from execution. In America and Canada these homestead laws exist and work well. It occurs to our cousins across the pond that it is a better thing to keep a home together than to sell it up for an old song to pay official fees and costs and something on account to the foolish creditor. The returns from a poor auction of a workman's household furniture are miserable reading. The landlord by distress or the tally-man by execution may get a few shillings for himself and pay away a few more shillings to bailiffs and others, but the cost of it to the poor is cruel. Tables and chairs and perhaps a sideboard that represent months of savings and long hours of labour are in a moment of misfortune snatched away from their proud possessor and his home is a ruin.