What happened undoubtedly was this: Parliament as a whole was out to abolish imprisonment for debt. There were a lot of old-fashioned folk then as now, who wanted to retain it. Compromises were made. It was agreed that there should be abolition, it was also agreed that there should be exceptions. The exceptions readily granted were cases of fraudulent trusteeship and the like. This was not enough for the old gang, so the promoters of the reform threw in poor persons owing small debts. The poor had as few friends in Parliament as the fraudulent and they were huddled together into the same bundle of exceptions as a sop to the opponents of the Bill. When folk describe our present system in the County Court as anything other than imprisonment for debt, a legitimate offspring of its noble Norman ancestor _capias ad satisfaciendum_, they do it in ignorance of the legal and political history of the Debtors Act, 1869. I should like to have set out much of the debate in the House of Commons on the second reading of this Bill. Sir Robert Collier, the Attorney-General, openly expressed his regret that imprisonment for debt was going to be retained in the County Courts, and several members spoke wisely about the hardships then inflicted on the poor and the undesirability of continuing them. But the following extract from a speech of Mr. McMahon shows that no one at that time was under any delusion about what was going to be done. "When," he said, "arrest on mesne process was abolished shortly after the passing of the Reform Bill it was then said that credit would be disturbed, and that traders would not be able to carry on their business. But these forebodings were purely imaginary, and in the same way he believed no evil would attend the good that must undoubtedly result from the final abolition of imprisonment. If, however, they allowed the rich man to escape under the bankruptcy system they ought not to admit the poor man to be liable to imprisonment, for by so doing they would certainly be open to the charge of having one law for the man in broadcloth and another for the man in corduroys." Here the warning is clearly given by a man on the spot, that what they were about to do was to set up a system unfair to the poor, and there was really no doubt in the minds of any of the legislators of the day that they were deliberately retaining imprisonment for debt for the poor. I want to insist on this point because one of the stumbling blocks in the way of reform to-day is the strange belief, fostered by the tally-man and his friends, that in some mysterious way imprisonment for debt has really been already abolished and that the working classes really go to prison for contempt of court or some other reason. There is no truth in this whatever.