It is to Lord Cottenham, as I have said, that we owe the statute which, to use Mr. Atlay's phrase, "abolished the bane of Mr. Micawber's existence, imprisonment for debt on mesne process." Nor must it be thought that it was done without a struggle. Lord Lyndhurst said, and no doubt truly, that, judging from the petitions, he should be within the truth in saying that the Bill was very unpopular. The petitions were at least ten to one against the Bill. There was no more enthusiasm about mitigating imprisonment for debt then than there is to-day. The history of these things is always the same; the traders objected to the abolition of imprisonment for debt, the newspaper proprietors strenuously opposed the reduction of the Stamp Acts, the doctors fought against national insurance. Yet, when the horrible thing is done, we find them smugly prospering on the reform. Lord Brougham, who from the very first had always held instinctively the true faith in these matters, pointed out to a reluctant House how credit was imprudently given to the real injury of the customer who is induced to buy what he cannot pay for, and to the injury of those who do pay what they do owe, but who pay the dearer in proportion to the bad debts which the tradesman is led to let others contract with him. Further, he emphasised the wrong done by clothing an insolvent person with an appearance of credit by lending him more goods which serve as a bait or decoy to others that have not yet trusted him. He laid down the principle that debt should never be treated as a crime and still less as a crime to be punished at the sole will and pleasure of the creditor, and eloquently called upon the peers to wipe out this foul stain from our civil code.