"The motive of credit," says Dr. Johnson, "is the hope of advantage. Commerce can never be at a stop while one man wants what another can supply; and credit will never be denied whilst it is likely to be repaid with profit. He that trusts one whom he designs to sue is criminal by the act of trust: the cessation of such invidious traffic is to be desired and no reason can be given why a change of the law should impair any other. We see nation trade with nation where no payment can be compelled. Mutual convenience produces mutual confidence and the merchants continue to satisfy the demands of each other though they have nothing to dread but the loss of trade." This argument was against imprisonment for debt as the worthy Doctor saw it in his own time, but it is just as convincing to-day about our own or any other form of imprisonment for debt. It goes to the principle and the root of the matter and, like many another of his best sayings, is the knock-out blow on the subject. Further, we have proved in our own country the beneficial effects of the abolition of imprisonment for debt, and other countries have set us the good example of doing away with it altogether. In Germany they have a strict system of enforcing judgments against well-to-do debtors who seek to cheat their creditors, a class to whom we are somewhat indulgent, allowing many fraudulent persons to live at the expense of tradesmen by the simple expedient of putting goods in their wife's name. But this procedure is not available against working men, and the result is that they have to pay their way as they go along. Dr. Schuster, an English barrister and a Doctor of Laws of the University of Munich, explained the German system of debt collecting to the Commission of 1908. Not only did he make it clear that the German workman had, in the absence of imprisonment, acquired habits of thrift that our system discourages, but he pointed out that the insurance funds against sickness and accident, the trades unions, the co-operative societies, and charitable relief, enabled a German working man to tide over bad times without hanging a millstone of debt about his neck as he has to do in this country.