The servant of the parable was the meanest of curs. He "went out, and found one of his fellow-servants, which owed him a hundred pence: and he laid hold on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay what thou owest." Here, again, we may flatter ourselves on our superior procedure. If this had happened in Lambeth, the servant would not have been allowed to go for his fellow servant with such jubilant audacity. Nowadays everything would be done in legal decency and order. The debt being for a hundred pence, and, therefore, being within the jurisdiction of the County Court, a summons would have to be issued, fees would have to be paid to the Treasury and the Court officials, and a lot of money spent and added to the debt before imprisonment followed. Still the rough-and-ready methods of the earlier centuries were certainly cheaper, and the result was much the same. For we read that, though the fellow-servant pleaded in the same formula, "Have patience with me, and I will pay thee," the creditor of the hundred pence stood firm for his rights and cast his fellow servant into prison till he should pay his due. And if this had been a repertory drama and not a parable, the curtain had fallen on that scene and one would have come away depressed with the abjectness of human nature and with a cold feeling that the world was a drab uncomfortable place. But the ancient dramatic stories always have a happy ending. There is more of the spirit of the old Adelphi than of the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, about the parables. The lord hears of his servant's scurvy behaviour and, to the delight of all sane men of child-like and simple faith, the wicked servant is delivered to the tormentors till he shall pay all that was due. I confess that my legal mind has been haunted with the thought that, the lord having forgiven the servant his debt, it was rather a strong order for him to go back on that forgiveness. Doubtless there was no consideration for the forgiveness, it was _nudum pactum_, or there may have been an implied contract that the servant should do unto others as he had been done by, but I rather expect the lord and his advisers only considered the justice of their act rather than its technical legal accuracy. But one thing we can rejoice in. There is the dramatic story, and no one can construe it into approval of any form of imprisonment for debt. I know that many who do not regard the Bible as an authority will not be troubled about this testimony; probably many more who do read the Scriptures for guidance will be pained that anyone should make use of holy words to upset a system that they find so useful in the commercial weekdays of life. Moreover, some will shake their heads and remind me that "the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose." That is true enough. But it will be a very clever devil who can cite any Scripture in support of section 5 of the Debtors Act, 1869.