I suspect that here, too, if we contrive to oppose this bill, we shall be found in a struggle against the nature of things.  For, as we grow enlightened, the public will not bear, for any length of time, to pay for the maintenance of whole armies of prisoners, nor, at their own expense, submit to keep jails as a sort of garrisons, merely to fortify the absurd principle of making men judges in their own cause.  For credit has little or no concern in this cruelty.  I speak in a commercial assembly.  You know that credit is given because capital must be employed; that men calculate the chances of insolvency; and they either withhold the credit, or make the debtor pay the risk in the price.  The counting-house has no alliance with the jail.  Holland understands trade as well as we, and she has done much more than this obnoxious bill intended to do.  There was not, when Mr. Howard visited Holland, more than one prisoner for debt in the great city of Rotterdam.  Although Lord Beauchamp’s act (which was previous to this bill, and intended to feel the way for it) has already preserved liberty to thousands, and though it is not three years since the last act of grace passed, yet, by Mr. Howard’s last account, there were near three thousand again in jail.  I cannot name this gentleman without remarking that his labors and writings have done much to open the eyes and hearts of mankind.  He has visited all Europe,—­not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces or the stateliness of temples, not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur nor to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art, not to collect medals or collate manuscripts,—­but to dive into the depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospitals, to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain, to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt, to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries.  His plan is original; and it is as full of genius as it is of humanity.  It was a voyage of discovery, a circumnavigation of charity.  Already the benefit of his labor is felt more or less in every country; I hope he will anticipate his final reward by seeing all its effects fully realized in his own.  He will receive, not by retail, but in gross, the reward of those who visit the prisoner; and he has so forestalled and monopolized this branch of charity, that there will be, I trust, little room to merit by such acts of benevolence hereafter.

Nothing now remains to trouble you with but the fourth charge against me,—­the business of the Roman Catholics.  It is a business closely connected with the rest.  They are all on one and the same principle.  My little scheme of conduct, such as it is, is all arranged.  I could do nothing but what I have done on this subject, without confounding the whole train of my ideas and disturbing the whole order of my life.  Gentlemen, I ought to apologize