OF IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT IN ENGLAND Oh let me pierce the secret shade Where dwells the venerable maid! There humbly mark, with reverend awe, The guardian of Britannia's law; Unfold with joy her sacred page, The united boast of many an age; Where mixed, yet uniform, appears The wisdom of a thousand years. SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE: "The Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse." I am honestly sorry to have to inflict a chapter of legal history upon anyone, but for the life of me I do not see how the imprisonment for debt of to-day can be intelligently appreciated until one knows something of its lineage. To begin with, it may be news to some folk to learn that in the merry days of Henry III. there was no imprisonment for debt at all. If Godfrey the garlic seller or Hogg the needier owed Rose of the small shop a tally for weekly purchases and would not pay, Rose, poor woman, could not get an order to send them to gaol. Yet there is no evidence that trade was thereby injured, or that there was any difficulty in Rose regulating her credit-giving, or in Godfrey and Hogg and the rest obtaining as much credit as they deserved. The first thing to remember is that England at one period had no use for imprisonment for debt. It occurs to me that, if I can persuade the man in the street to understand how imprisonment for debt began and continued until it became a great public scandal, and show how in the last hundred years little by little its evil influence and extent have been abated with good results, we shall be making great strides towards the restoration of that liberty in England which in the matter of debt was the citizen's privilege in the days of Henry III. But the reason for the absence of imprisonment for debt in these early feudal days is not so satisfactory to modern ears as one could wish. Lord Chief Baron Gilbert, that crisp and accurate lawyer of the eighteenth century, puts it very clearly when he says: "But there was no Capias for the Debt or Damages of a Common Person, because the party having trusted him only with personal Things his remedy was only on the personal Estate, and the King had the Interest in the Body of his subject; and the Lord in his _Feudatory_ or _Vassal_ to be called out to War or to labour for him; and therefore none but the King could imprison him." And this seems clear, that the reason a creditor could not imprison a debtor was because in those days a debtor had only a limited interest in his own body. The fighting part of his body belonged to the king, the labouring part of his body belonged to his lord, and the king and the lord were not going to have their rights and property in his body interfered with because the subject and vassal had been foolish enough to run into debt with another subject and vassal who wanted his money.