cannot pay; but what has this to do with the question whether the imprisonments under sect. 5 of the Debtors Act are not in practice confined to the working classes?1 Moreover, one of the recommendations of the Committee is to abolish imprisonment for debts incurred for luxuries or for money lent. If this amendment were adopted, how many men belonging to the upper classes would be compelled to pay their debts by means of a judgment-summons in a County Court? If the present legislation is not class legislation, would not the proposed amendment render it so?

The difference of practice between different English County Court judges is admitted by the Committee, but the causes of it and the best modes of remedying it have not been fully or satisfactorily investigated. One difference noted by them is, that "some judges insist on legal evidence of means to pay. Others make full use of their liberty to accept evidence 'in such manner as the Court thinks just,' accepting for example certificates as to wages from employers, statements of bailiffs of the Court, evidence not on oath, and other hearsay evidence." They express a decided opinion in favour of the more lax practice. "The judge's discretion," they write, "to hear other than legal evidence is to the advantage, principally of the debtors, but also of the creditors." The ground of this latter assertion seems to be that proof by legal evidence would involve greater expense, which expense would, generally speaking, fall on the debtor; for I presume they did not mean that while it was to the advantage of both parties to be able to tell lies without incurring the penalties of perjury, the debtors were on the whole more successful liars than the creditors. But let us concede the proposition as stated. We do not want to know whether the practice in question is

1 The counter-report here ran: "Your Committee have received overwhelming and, in fact, practically uncontradicted evidence that it is the working class, and the working class alone, which suffers the penalty of imprisonment for debt.' Why did the framers of the successful Report neither admit nor deny this statement?

advantageous to the debtors as a whole or to the creditors as a whole. We want to know whether it is conducive to the public interest-to the cause of justice. If a debtor is wrongfully imprisoned on account of the reception of lax evidence, is it a sufficient answer to say that three debtors who ought to have been imprisoned escaped in consequence of evidence equally untrustworthy? Does the Committee intend to assert that the reception of this kind of evidence is conducive to the ascertainment of the truth? If so, why not admit it in all trials, whether civil or criminal?

The statute requires proof to the satisfaction of the Court of means to pay, present or past, and goes on to say that proof (not "evidence") may be given in such manner as the Court thinks just, and that for this purpose witnesses may be summoned and examined on oath. Clearly what the Legislature intended was that no man should be imprisoned without satisfactory proof of his means to pay; and in defending the existing law it is often urged that no injustice can be done, because satisfactory proof of the debtor's means to pay must be given before the committal order is made. Can such evidence (if that term can be applied to it) as the Committee here mentions afford satisfactory proof of anything? There was hardly a County Court judge examined before the Committee who did not admit that the kind of evidence on which committal orders were often made was of the most unsatisfactory character, and in fact did not amount to proof in the ordinary meaning, much less in the legal meaning, of that term. Why then did not the judges insist on having the satisfactory proof of means to pay which the Legislature apparently intended. to require; and why did they accept evidence that they would not listen to in any other case before them? Simply, I apprehend, to prevent the statute from becoming a dead letter-the creditor being seldom in a position to give satisfactory proof of the debtor's means to pay, while even in the

cases where he could do so, the expense of giving strict proof would probably exceed the sum claimed. The wholesale rejection of such applications would moreover discredit the Court as a machinery for collecting small debts-which is usually described as its main object—and would often deprive the registrar of a great part of his emoluments. But there never was a more groundless assumption than that all debtors, honest and dishonest, have a common interest, and that the system which imprisons fewest debtors is best, even though all the imprisonments may be wrongful. It is not in the interests of justice or of the public that any debtor should be imprisoned without clear and cogent evidence as to the grounds for inflicting this punishment.

The great increase in the number of committal warrants is a circumstance which must strike every student of judicial statistics. In 1906 they were almost six times as numerous as in 1870, though the population had not doubled during the interval. The Committee might have been expected to inquire into the causes of this increase and the means by which its further progress might be checked. But the feature which attracts their attention is a less conspicuous and important one-viz., the smaller per-centage of imprisonments compared with warrants of committal. This they ascribe to the greater care which, in their opinion, judges now exercise in granting committal orders. The applications for committal orders having become six times more numerous than they were formerly, and the number heard by the judge on the same day having increased in something like the same proportion, we are asked to believe that the judges now give more time and attention to each individual case than they did formerly, and consequently make fewer erroneous findings as to means to pay. It seems more reasonable to ascribe the change, such as it is, to the practice which was declared legal by the House of Lords in the case of Stonor v. Fowle in 1886--viz., making a

committal order with a stay on execution so long as the debtor continues to pay certain specified instalments. Before this practice (which seems to be now almost universal) had been adopted, the debtor who was erroneously found to have the means to pay went to prison. Now, in the majority of cases, he acquires the means to pay during the time that execution is stayed, and pays a sum which he had not the means of paying when the committal order was made. But there is not any such steady and continuous decrease in the proportion of imprisonments to committal orders as the Committee alleges. The alleged decrease in comparing 1907 with 1906 is chiefly due to the adoption of a different mode of reckoning debtors who were imprisoned on two or more committal orders running concurrently. The following are the per-centages of imprisonments to committal warrants for the ten years 1899-1908 inclusive, and I think, if we bear in mind the change in the mode of reckoning the number of imprisonments in 1907, which must have produced an apparent reduction of the percentage, the change during this period has been altogether in the opposite direction from that alleged by the Committee. In 1899 the ratio of imprisonments to warrants was 646 per cent.; in 1900, 6*12; in 1901, 6'53; in 1902, 6.84; in 1903, 7°24; in 1904, 8*14; in 1905, 7'77; in 1906, 7.84; in 1907, 6·32; and in 1908, 6:58. Are there any other six gentlemen in England who would find in these figures evidence of a continuous decrease in the ratio? As a further specimen of their accuracy as regards statistics, I may mention that they tell us in the body of the Report that the number of imprisonments in 1897 was 9,214, whereas it appears from the Appendix that it was 7,729.

It is not only from statistics, however, that the Committee draws very singular deductions. They contend that the power of imprisonment for debt should be continued because "the confidence between debtor and creditor is the founda

tion of trade," and if the "sanction" of imprisonment were withdrawn, this confidence might be weakened (whereas I presume it increases as the number of imprisoned debtors increases). It seems, however, to exist between wholesale merchants and retailers without this sanction; nor do I think banks ever imprison those who borrow money from them. But I am afraid that, if the recommendations of this Committee were adopted, the sanction of imprisonment would be withdrawn from at least one-half of the transactions on which committal orders are now made, and the "mutual advantages" which "both the giver and the receiver" derive from these transactions would thus be lost. Where would be the confidence between the money-lender and the borrower, or the purchaser of bad debts, and the man whom he sues, if this sanction did not exist? But one-sided legislation will never produce confidence between the two parties to a transaction.

The Committee justify the continuance of this sanction, however, on the ground that the debtors who are summoned before the County Courts are objectionable persons whose imprisonment would (I infer) be no great harm. They belong, as we are told in the Report,—not as far as I am aware in the evidence,-to three classes: (1) Those who have deceived the creditor by their statements as to their position; (2) Those regarding whom the creditor has been deceived by the statements of others; (3) Those whose character has deteriorated from causes which the Committee proceeds to enumerate. As to the first class, what kind of statements do they refer to? If the debtor exaggerated his means of paying but had sufficient means notwithstanding, how was the creditor damnified by the misrepresentation? While, if his representation that he had means to pay was false, is the judge justified in holding it to have been true, and granting a committal order accordingly? As to the second class, how is the