process, and including, I believe, imprisonments for contempt of Court. In England the total number of imprisonments of this kind in 1906 was 19,719. In Ireland for the same year it was 75. Is there not something worth inquiring into here? I may add that in Ireland these imprisonments seem to be rapidly increasing, though still greatly below the English level. In 1907 the number was 123, and in 1908 it was 174. The figures for Belfast in the three years were 2, 15, and 38 respectively. The cause of this increase I can only conjecture, but the English total (17,918 for the year 1908) is still more than 100 times as large as the Irish, while the population is scarcely 8 times as large. (The business transacted in the English County Courts seems to be about II times that in the Irish.) I find that these prisoners are still classed by the Prisons Board as "unemployed," so that no rules corresponding to those of 1899 seem to have been adopted in Ireland. I am not aware of the Scotch statistics. That further information as to the working of the Scotch Debtors Act could have been easily procured I cannot doubt. One of the three Irish members of the Committee retired during the course of the inquiry, and was succeeded by an English member. The other two were absent when the vote on the Report was taken. It is stated that they were both opposed to it. The solitary Scotch representative voted against it. Mr. Rendall, the author of the Report, in more than one of his questions, described the 12,000 persons imprisoned under the judgment-summons process in England in 1906 as the total number out of a population of 43 or 44 millions. This is the population of the United Kingdom, not that of England and Wales only. The Irish and Scotch were not even worth taking a passing glance at. If there was any difference, either in law or in practice, they were sure to be wrong.

The objections to imprisonment for debt under the existing

law are of two kinds, which I may describe as theoretical and practical. With the former I apprehend the Committee need not have troubled itself. The man in the street, if fairly educated, is as competent to deal with them as it was. Such an objection, for instance, is that cited by Judge Dodd from the Fourth Report of the Common Law Commissioners: "It is not consistent with any just principle of jurisprudence to enforce a mere civil claim by imprisonment." It would have been better if the Committee had abstained altogether from considerations of this kind and dealt with the practical branch of the question only-the advantages and disadvantages resulting from the present law, and the best mode of increasing the former and removing or diminishing the latter. Their dissertation on the necessity and advantage of credit seems to me to be as irrelevant as it is weak. If they had reported that the abolition of imprisonment for debt would destroy credit, this dissertation might have been relevant to the issue; but they seem to admit that this is not the case. If they had even reported that it would put an end to kinds of credit which were beneficial to the public, and which it was desirable to encourage, critics might confine their remarks to the futility of the reasoning. But if credit be a necessity, as they allege, it is clear that no change in the law would put an end to it, while it can hardly be denied that the present credits are often excessive, improvident, and fraught with evil consequences. Indeed, the recommendations of the Committee aim at suppressing many of these credits, which therefore they do not regard as desirable. Where do they show-or even allege that the abolition of imprisonment for debt would seriously interfere with any credit-giving which is beneficial to the public?

Passing to the practical objections, I find fault not merely with the Report of the Committee but with the whole inquiry. Granted that to go fully into every branch of the subject

would have occupied more time than the Committee could afford, a very considerable proportion of the imprisonments for debt in England have always arisen from other exceptions in the Debtors Act than the judgment-summons process. In 1907 the County Courts did not account for one-half of the entire number, and in the prison census taken in that year by the Home Secretary, out of 800 imprisoned debtors only 248 owed their imprisonment to the County Courts. The evidence as to these imprisonments by other tribunals was very scanty, and almost confined to the city of London, where we might naturally expect to find fewer defects or irregularities than elsewhere. If the Committee had stated that, owing to the scantiness of the evidence, they were not in a position to give any opinion with regard to these imprisonments, it would have been natural enough; but they write, "We find nothing to criticise in the administration of these powers by Courts other than the County Courts. The law, as it is, appears to be useful and salutary, and its administration by judges and magistrates is, we believe, just." Omne ignotum pro magnifico. The evidence, published along with the Report, is altogether insufficient to warrant any such conclusion. The counter-report, which had the support of half the members present, finds some faults in the present system, though it also proposed to retain a good many imprisonments under the first five exceptions in the Debtors Act. Had further evidence been taken it is probable that both sections of the Committee might have modified their views-for instance, as regards imprisonment for non-payment of rates or for maintenance of a wife, in which it appeared from a recent case that, under the present law, the unfortunate husband might spend his whole life in prison if the wife lived long enough.

In addition to the very perfunctory treatment of this important branch of the subject, the selection of witnesses as regards the County Courts seems to have been one-sided.

The judges may perhaps be regarded as occupying an impartial position, but this is not true of the registrars; and the non-official witnesses were almost all persons interested in making a good collection of debts. Only one debtor was examined, and he was not a victim of the present system, inasmuch as the attempt to imprison him had failed. It may not have been easy to procure the attendance of working men who had been wrongfully imprisoned, or of neighbours who could speak positively to the facts, but there seems little doubt that a more impartial selection of witnesses would have much strengthened the case on behalf of the debtors.

The Report of the Committee opens with a strange misstatement: "The Committee have devoted by far the largest part of their attention to a consideration of the question of committals under sect. 5 of the Debtors Act 1869. This jurisdiction is exclusively exercised by the County Court." Yet, they tell us towards the end of the Report, "Some 350 summonses are issued annually in the High Court for considerable sums exclusively against debtors who do not belong to the working classes." Were the members who adopted this Report under the impression that these summonses were issued under some other jurisdiction than that conferred by sect. 5 of the Debtors Act? It would almost seem so from the sapient remark which immediately follows. "We believe that the power of the High Court to commit to prison is essential if its orders are to be enforced." But elsewhere they seem to apply similar reasoning to the County Courts. Now the sixth exception to the abolition of imprisonment for debt comprised in the Debtors Act is, "default in payment of sums in respect of which orders are in this Act authorised to be made." Repeal these six exceptions and, of course, the orders made in respect of them will cease to be made, and there can be no contempt of Court in not obeying non

existing orders. If it were thought desirable to retain any of these orders in substance, it would be easy to do so in an altered form so as to prevent their non-fulfilment constituting a contempt of Court-to provide, for instance, that the plaintiff "shall recover" instead of that the defendant "shall pay." The plaintiff would still be entitled to use all the existing means of recovery except imprisonment. No complaints were made that the orders of the Scotch Courts were treated with contempt, although this mode of enforcing them can only be adopted in a few instances. After stating, however, that the judgmentsummons process is used only in the County Courts, the Committee publish in an Appendix the Forms of JudgmentSummonses, &c., used by the High Court. Did they read them?

An objection urged against the present law is, that it is class legislation, all the debtors who are imprisoned belonging to the working classes-for, as is stated, a debtor who can raise a few pounds can always avoid imprisonment by becoming bankrupt. The Committee might have been expected to state whether this is so or not, instead of which they simply allege that men belonging to the higher classes have been sued in the County Courts and have paid when threatened with imprisonment. But they do not allege that a single one of these men went to prison. The explanation of their being sued in the County Court is sufficiently obvious. The rules of the High Court as regards costs have led to actions for small sums being brought in the County Courts instead of the High Court, even when the defendant is a millionaire; and a debtor who has some assets (although his liabilities may greatly exceed them), will usually pay a small debt in full rather than take refuge from imprisonment in bankruptcy. Some persons may think that the payments thus obtained are a sufficient set-off for the imprisonment of a number of men who