"Well, the answer is very simple," I have to tell him. "The rules of the game are made by the rich for the rich, and not for you, Joseph, at all. Oh, dear, no! In the first place you must have a debt of fifty pounds." "Well," replies Joseph, "I think I could bring it as high as that if I tried." "And next you must have a creditor to make you bankrupt, and unless he thinks there is some stuffing in you or wool on your back a creditor is not going to waste his time and money making the likes of you bankrupt." "But," says my hopeful friend Joseph, "what is the meaning of a chap filing his own petition? I've often read of that. Why shouldn't I file my petition?" "My dear, simple fellow, you surely do not think the clever ones of the earth who look after your interests have not thought all that out? You take your petition to the Bankruptcy Court and see what happens. You will find the usual janitor at the door with his open palm. Of course you are expected to pay a fee--you have learned enough about English Courts to know that you do not get 'owt for nowt' in any of them. But in the Bankruptcy Court, my young friend, they foresaw you coming along and they have put the figure too high for you. Ten pounds, money down! That's the price. If you want to set all the pretty little figures working, the official receiver smiling, the registrar writing it all down, and the judge nodding on the bench, and the Board of Trade publishing statistics about you--ten pounds into the slot, my young friend, and the figures will work. "But you have not got ten pounds, Joseph, and you could not raise the sum if you tried, so you will have to go back to work and pay twenty shillings in the pound somehow. And don't go and sell your gramophone and drawing-room suite, for they are on the hire system, and that would put you in the dock, where I hope you may never be. No. 1512 bought his L40,000 worth of jewels out and out, or said he did, and it was a Paris jeweller, anyhow, and I believe he was one of the 'nuts' and not your class at all, Joseph, but you may take it from me that you must not expect to be treated as he was. Have I said enough, my dear friend? Are you quite satisfied? Bankruptcy, I can assure you, is not for Joseph. Oh, dear, no!" It is only fair to the law and to the memory of Mr. Chamberlain, who made the law, to remember that when he introduced the Bankruptcy Act of 1883 he invented a system of small bankruptcies called administration orders, whereby poor folk whose debts do not amount to fifty pounds may make a composition with their creditors. Let me set down in his own words exactly what he intended and tried to do. I quote from his speech on the second reading of the Bill: