only forfeited the goods so taken, but a writ issued, called a distingas, or distress infinite, which directed that the defendant should be distrained from time to time, and continually afterwards, by taking his goods and the profits of his lands, which were called issues, and which were sold if he did not appear in court and answer the complaint of the plaintiff.

And here the process ended, in cases of injury without force. The defendant, if he had any substance, being gradually stripped of it all by repeated distresses, until he rendered obedience to the summons; and if he had no substance, the law held him incapable of making satisfaction; and therefore looked on all further process as nugatory. On judgment being obtained, if the party appeared to the suit, an execution was ordered to issue against his goods and ehattels, and if there was nothing by which it could be satisfied, all further process was held to be useless.

In the estimation of the law, no redress could be given to the plaintiff except in the specific thing claimed, to wit: money or goods. It did not coi.template that high satisfaction at present demanded-imprisonment of the body. All that was disputed or contended for, was a valuable consideration. The process of law was directed against that which was claimed-property; not against that which was not claimed-liberty. This course of proceeding is in exact conformity to all agreements, and in no one instance does it tend to violate them. Thus stood the action for debt. There were other actions known, wherein the law authorised a peremptory summons and a capias.

In all cases where an action was brought to recover damages, and where the violence of the wrong required a speedy remedy, the orginal writ commanded the goods of the defendant to be at once attached without any precedent warning; and in cases of injury accompanied with force, the law, to punish a breach of the peace and prevent its disturbance for the future, provided also, a process against the defendant's person, if he neglected to appear upon the former process of attachment, or had no substance whereby to be attached, subjecting his body to imprisonment by capias ad respondendum.

Can any thing be presented which is so completely and wholly based on justice and principle? In the first place an action for debt,

a claim, or demand certain, was confined in its operation exclusively to the property of the party, on the ground that the demand reached no further. In the second place, a demand founded on wrong done, where it partook of violence or deceit, the law authorised the arrest of the person.

Here was even handed justice; distinguishing between the rights of the citizen and those of the community, determining what could be done by contaact between individuals and what is due to the domestic obligations and the public. Under the common law no such process as capias ad satisfaciendum was known. The law recognized no process after judgment against the person of the party, and consequently the inhuman practice of imprisonment for not doing what it was not in the power of the individual to do, was not known.

The law remained unchanged until the reign of Henry Sd, although the practice of the courts had become more tyrannical, and the habits of the people more depraved. In this reign, the sacred rights of the citizen, the principles of morality, and the social ties, were openly violated, and the most abandoned course was pursued by the king, and followed by his subjects. Even justice was openly bought and sold; the King's Court itself, though the supreme judicature of the kingdom, was open to none who brought not presents to the king. The bribes given for the expedition, delay, suspension, and doubtless for the perversion of justice, were entered in the public registers of the royal revenue, and remain as monuments of the iniquity of the times. Through the whole of this and many succeeding reigns, the sole stimulant for the king, the nobleman, the priest, the judge, and we may add, every other class of society, was money; to obtain which, all the requirements of humanity, of kindred, of honor, of religion, were sacrificed; murder, robbery, and every species of felony were forgiven, and even justified, provided money could be obtained. Is it wonderful then, that non-payment of money was considered a crime? Is it astonishing that a debtor was worse treated than a criminal? when the lawgiver, the judge, and the king, were ready to give their voice in favor of the party giving the largest bribe. This first deviation from the principles of the common law should be well understood, and the causes which gave rise to it well examined, that the individuals who are so jealous of what they call the rights of the creditor, may be satisfied that they are based upon the same principles as the “ divine right of kings."

The first four statutes on the subject of imprisonment for debt, were enacted in the reigns of Henry 3d and Edward 1st: they were considered flagrant infringements upon the natural and unalienable rights of personal liberty, (as declared by Magna Charta,) and were productive of such a train of oppression, misery and wretchedness, in the community, that government, in order to allay the indignation of the people, and prevent the deep sense of their sufferings from driving them to open hostility against the king and parliament, was constrained to repeal those laws; and thus, as Lord Coke affirms, "restore to the people all their original laws and liberties, in the best and fullest manner they used to have them."

In the reign of Edward the Third, a statute was again enacted, authorising imprisonment for debt.

"The evils of the system were again renewed and increased. The people again complained and threatened: government again found it necessary to confirm the great charter, and repeal the laws of imprisonment for debt; and in the preamble of one of the statutes passed for that purpose, (25 Edward 3d, 1352,) the oppression of debtors by their creditors was stated as the grievance intended to be removed. But still the courts of justice continued to imprison for debt. "The practice," says an able and intelligent writer on the subject, "had become too general to be easily exterminated, and for very obvious reasons.

"The law of imprisonment for debt, placed additional power in the hands of those who made it, and whose privilege exempted them from a participation in the sufferings it occasioned; and although their fears had dictated a repeal of those laws, as the most prudent and effectual means of quieting the people, they were in reality not averse to the principles they avowed.

"The monied interest of the country was also in their favor, and the venality of the courts and ministers of justice sought and obtained a pecuniary profit from the practice, while the great mass of the people, whose right and suffering were not regarded when their resentments were not feared, and on whom the whole weight of this iniquitous practice fell, had no means, but by open violence, to destroy or counteract its operations. While the people were jealous only of the legislative department of government, and while their watchful eyes were often turned to the quarter from which only they apprehended any danger of attacks upon their natural or

constitutional rights, the judicial department quickly put on the chain before the danger was discovered, and riveted it before there was time to cast it off. Imprisonment for debt proceeded as uninteruptedly as if it was no infringement upon Magna Charta.”

The practice was founded on a fiction of law, (always used to extend the power of the court.) The writ was issued, setting forth that the party had committed a breach of the peace-that he had broken into the plaintiff's close vi et armis, which, according to the old common law, subjected the defendant's person to be arrested by writ of capias; and then afterwards, by connivance of the court, the plaintiff might proceed to prosecute for any other less forcible injury.

"This practice of the courts continued, in defiance of law, as if the statutes which gave birth to imprisonment for debt had not been repealed, until the statute, 19 Henry 7th, in the year 1466, was enacted, construed and practised on, as if it had been, as it seemed to imply, predicated on a previously existing and unrepealed statute authorising imprisonment for debt. This statute, however, gave countenance to the illegal practice of the judicial courts, and imprisonment for debt continued on without molestation, until its baneful influence had spread human misery far and wide, and was increasing still, when the statute of 8th Elizabeth (1566) was made, to punish those who had, as the law itself stated, "of their own malicious minds, and without any just cause, procured their fellow-subjects to be greatly molested and troubled, by attachments and arrests made of their bodies, only on a mere pretence of debt." The number of this class of sufferers must have been great, and the number of those who, even at this carly period, had used the law of imprisonment for debt for the purpose of oppression, by no means small, when the government deemed it requisite to interpose to arrest the evil." "This, however," says Burges, in his consideration on the law of insolvency, "was not the only grievance which called for redress. It was grown to be a common practice for any man who envied the prosperity of his neighbor, who was desirous of putting out of his way a more successful competitor, or who wished to gratify the calls of personal hatred, to cause another to be arrested, at the suit either of some person who in fact did not exist, or of some one who had no cause of action, and who was ignorant of the malicious prostitution of his name. To what length will not the depravity of mankind go, when an unlimited

field for the exercise of their passions is afforded to them; when the municipal law dares to remove the sacred land-marks of the law of nature? What apology can be made for a practice which thus instantly, as it were, opened the sluices of oppression, fraud and perjury?

"Enormous as was the grievance for which a remedy was proposed by the preceding act, it was but a part of the mischiefs which arose from this oppressive practice; and, consequently, the wholesome operation of the statutes 8th Elizabeth, c. 2, was extremely circumscribed, and confined to a few of the unhappy sufferers.

"The jails became daily more crowded with prisoners; the cries of the unhappy still were heard; the miseries of the people still continued unrelieved. Their cries ascended even to the throne, and the monarch was moved to pity the calamities of her subjects, to restore to freedom and to happiness the honest and the industrious.— On the 26th day of April, 1585, she issued a proclamation which, according to the system of those times, was considered as having the force of law; she authorised certain commissioners therein mentioned, to compound controversies and causes between prisoners and their creditors, and such others (who were in reality not creditors) by whom they were detained or in execution."

This commission continued in force only until her death. King James 1st, for the purpose of improving upon the charitable provisions of Elizabeth, on the 11th day of November, 1618, declared by a proclamation, "that it had been found by experience, that for want of Elizabeth's proclamation, or some other charitable course for the relief of such as are truly and indeed poor, distressed and miserable, and want means to satisfy their creditors, had been an occasion to pester and fill the prisons with the bodies of those persons, whose imprisonment could in no way avail their creditors, but rather was an hindrance to the satisfaction of their debts; for that, during the time of their restraints, they were in nowise able to go about or attend to their lawful business, of course consumed themselves and what little they had, miserably, in prison."

"The proclamation then appointed commissioners, with power to treat, persuade, mediate and procure composition and agreement with the creditors and debtors-some tender consideration being had of the debtors, their wives and children, and unto poor and miserable persons, as had not wherewith to satisfy their debts-but were con