Arrest on mesne process was abolished, not ungrudgingly it is true, but it came to an end, and a commission was set up in 1839 to inquire and report upon the whole system of imprisonment for debt. This commission ultimately reported in favour of abolition. In 1844 another Bill was introduced to distinguish between cases where it could be shown that the debtor was an innocent fool and not a culpable contumacious defrauder. It was not of much avail as a social reform, but may be fairly described, perhaps, as a worthy effort. The brightest reading in its history for us to-day is the debate in which Lord Brougham, with savage eloquence, rubs it in--the modern slang expresses Brougham's method so accurately--and jeers at the opponents of imprisonment for debt now that all their Cassandra prophecies over the abolition of imprisonment by mesne process have proved themselves to be worthless. Abolition of this system had not diminished credit, and had not raised any difficulty in citizens obtaining credit. Then, as now, these were the trade arguments against reform solemnly used by business men, officials and lawyers, and though, on each occasion when the reform has taken place, they have been found to be the hollowest nonsense, yet they are repeated to the reformers of to-day with the same pompous effrontery with which they were offered to Lord Brougham. We now come to 1869, in which year the present state of the law was created, and it is this law which seems to me so unjust to wage earners and poor people who are in debt, placing them as it does in conjunction with the Bankruptcy Laws in such a wholly inferior position to that of the well-to-do citizens. In order to understand the exact legal position it is, I fear, necessary to deal with the matter in some little detail. The intention of the Legislature at the time seems to have been right enough. It was desired, no doubt, that a fraudulent debtor should be punished and that an honest debtor should not. If a means could be invented to carry out this principle no one would utter a word against it. A fraudulent debtor is, I take it, a man who, having ample means over and above the reasonable necessities of himself and his family, conceals them or places them in fictitious names and then defrauds his debtor and refuses to pay him. I should be in favour of more stringent measures being taken against the fraudulent debtor, for one meets him every day, well-to-do and smiling, with a bill of sale on his furniture and everything in his wife's name. But he is the curled darling of the law. He makes use of the law to protect himself and his frauds, and the Debtors Act, which was intended to abolish imprisonment for debt, has no terrors for him, whilst under its provisions hundreds of weekly wage earners are imprisoned.