These are truths; not creditable to the country, but they are truths.  I am sorry for their existence.  Sir, there is one crime, quite too common, which the laws of man do not punish, but which cannot escape the justice of God; and that is, the arrest and confinement of a debtor by his creditor, with no motive on earth but the hope that some friend, or some relative, perhaps almost as poor as himself, his mother it may be, or his sisters, or his daughters, will give up all their own little pittance, and make beggars of themselves, to save him from the horrors of a loathsome jail.  Human retribution cannot reach this guilt; human feeling may not penetrate the flinty heart that perpetrates it; but an hour is surely coming, with more than human retribution on its wings, when that flint shall be melted, either by the power of penitence and grace, or in the fires of remorse.

Sir, I verily believe that the power of perpetuating debts against debtors, for no substantial good to the creditor himself, and the power of imprisonment for debt, at least as it existed in this country ten years ago, have imposed more restraint on personal liberty than the law of debtor and creditor imposes in any other Christian and commercial country.  If any public good were attained, any high political object answered, by such laws, there might be some reason for counselling submission and sufferance to individuals.  But the result is bad, every way.  It is bad to the public and to the country, which loses the efforts and the industry of so many useful and capable citizens.  It is bad to creditors, because there is no security against preferences, no principle of equality, and no encouragement for honest, fair, and seasonable assignments of effects.  As to the debtor, however good his intentions or earnest his endeavors, it subdues his spirit and degrades him in his own esteem; and if he attempts any thing for the purpose of obtaining food and clothing for his family, he is driven to unworthy shifts and disguises, to the use of other persons’ names, to the adoption of the character of agent, and various other contrivances, to keep the little earnings of the day from the reach of his creditors.  Fathers act in the name of their sons, sons act in the name of their fathers; all constantly exposed to the greatest temptation to misrepresent facts and to evade the law, if creditors should strike.  All this is evil, unmixed evil.  And what is it all for?  Of what benefit to anybody?  Who likes it?  Who wishes it?  What class of creditors desire it?  What consideration of public good demands it?