with a strong and more than usual recommendation to the consideration of the House, on account of the character and consequence of those who signed it.  I believe the worthy gentleman will tell you, that, the very day I received it, I applied to the Solicitor, now the Attorney General, to give it an immediate consideration; and he most obligingly and instantly consented to employ a great deal of his very valuable time to write an explanation of the bill.  I attended the committee with all possible care and diligence, in order that every objection of yours might meet with a solution, or produce an alteration.  I entreated your learned recorder (always ready in business in which you take a concern) to attend.  But what will you say to those who blame me for supporting Lord Beauchamp’s bill, as a disrespectful treatment of your petition, when you hear, that, out of respect to you, I myself was the cause of the loss of that very bill?  For the noble lord who brought it in, and who, I must say, has much merit for this and some other measures, at my request consented to put it off for a week, which the Speaker’s illness lengthened to a fortnight; and then the frantic tumult about Popery drove that and every rational business from the House.  So that, if I chose to make a defence of myself, on the little principles of a culprit, pleading in his exculpation, I might not only secure my acquittal, but make merit with the opposers of the bill.  But I shall do no such thing.  The truth is, that I did occasion the loss of the bill, and by a delay caused by my respect to you.  But such an event was never in my contemplation.  And I am so far from taking credit for the defeat of that measure, that I cannot sufficiently lament my misfortune, if but one man, who ought to be at large, has passed a year in prison by my means.  I am a debtor to the debtors.  I confess judgment.  I owe what, if ever it be in my power, I shall most certainly pay,—­ample atonement and usurious amends to liberty and humanity for my unhappy lapse.  For, Gentlemen, Lord Beauchamp’s bill was a law of justice and policy, as far as it went:  I say, as far as it went; for its fault was its being in the remedial part miserably defective.

There are two capital faults in our law with relation to civil debts.  One is, that every man is presumed solvent:  a presumption, in innumerable cases, directly against truth.  Therefore the debtor is ordered, on a supposition of ability and fraud, to be coerced his liberty until he makes payment.  By this means, in all cases of civil insolvency, without a pardon from his creditor, he is to be imprisoned for life; and thus a miserable mistaken invention of artificial science operates to change a civil into a criminal judgment, and to scourge misfortune or indiscretion with a punishment which the law does not inflict on the greatest crimes.