I cautiously laid in our sleeping rooin the following remarks on bankruptcy, partly extracted from a popular provincial work, and partly original, which I venture to submit to the candid reader, under a conviction that they inay be of service to those young per sons who have to make their way in a world of snares and hazards, and to whom caution and circumspection are at the present crisis so peculiarly necessary.

In a commercial country like ours, perhaps it is impossible that bankruptcies should be wholly avoided; but out of a hundred, probably there are not more than one, which is the conse quence of unavoidable misfortune. Facts will speak for themselves, to the sober reflecting mind.

"If inquiry be made in every town, it will be found that some of its most dashing inbabitants have formerly failed in business. Is there more than one in an

Monthly Magazine, July, 1805.

hundred of these who call their credîtors together for the purpose of paying the remainder of their debts? The signing of a certificate is no discharge to an honest mind; such a man as soon as he has it in his power, will be eager to pay to the very utmost, and if he is not honest, when rising in the world, it is more than probable he was a knave when sinking. Considering the pro

gress made in civilization, it seems astonishing, that a crime attended with such incalculable mischiefs, is not rendered more disgraceful. True, there are christian societies which have an unbending rule, that if one of their members fail, unless he can prove it to be the consequence of inevitable misfortune, he is immediately discarded, forfeits all the privileges of the connection, and is suffered to sink into the disgrace he deserves; but if he can make it appear to be the consequence of unavoidable misfortune, he is assisted and encouraged. The consequence is that a bankruptcy comparatively seldom takes place amongst such christian societies.

"In the community at large, this evil

seems to be rather encouraged. When a man finds, owing to bad mauagement in trade, extravagance in his family, and a general improvidence, which commonly runs through the whole system, that he can do no longer, he gets some person who is connected with him to strike what is called a friendly docket, in order to prevent his being sent to prison, pays his creditors the composition he chooses, gets his certificate signed, and to the astonishment of all, but the initiated, in a little time gets on in a higher style than before ; vies with his neighbours in expence, takes his journies of pleasure, and boasts of his prosperity; while the humble hard-working manufacturer or mechanic, who had perhaps entrusted his little all in his gay master's hands,

is soon crushed to rise no more. The oppressor stalks by with unfeeling superciliousness; but the hour is not far distant, when he shall be made to know that a day of strict retribution is not a chimera.

* All this was the wish of my wife, though I thought it not prudent to say so in this paper.

a

The man who trades beyond his capital, or who lives beyond his income, is a pest to the neighbourhood, and a practical enemy to the great interests of society. He is a public robber, robber of the inost dangerous kind, for, under the specious pretence of lawful traffic, of enlarging his connection, and increasing his trade, if he happen to have any relative sufficiently kind and credulous, he will not rest until he has secured the honest earnings of patient industry, or the humble independence of an unapprized and unprotected female; that he may bring down the grey hairs of the former with sorrow to the grave, or plunge the latter into all the horrors of want. That he is bringing upon his children ill habits which must render them burthens to society and miserable, never enters into the calculation of this hero of antiquity. To live and make an appearance, is his object; and should the transient pang of remorse threaten to betray itself on his bloated countenance, with a few additional glasses he drives off care till to-morrow. The desperado who charges his pistol, and puts on his

crape, seems to have some sense of right: and wrong; he steals from the common walks of decent life, the faces he has known, the benefactors who have raised him, he calls on the darkness to cover him; he seeks the path of the traveller, he assaults the stranger, the unknown one, to whom perhaps a few guineas may be no serious loss, the person rob

sees the worst at once, and has no teazing and expensive journey. The thief has abused no confidence, he has insulted no relative, he has tortured no tenderness; yet he is pursued like a demon, he is dragged to a dungeon, to fetters, and hurled from a tribunal to the gallows! It certainly ought to be the object of civilized states to prevent crimes, and all chastisement should have this end in view. It must be allowed that bankruptcy is an evil which involves more pernicious consequences than highway robbery; and it is astonishing that legislators and moralists are not intent on devising means for diminishing its frequency. A sense of honour and shame has yet, it is presumed, some degree of influence; and was bankruptcy made infamous,

H