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Bondage
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805. Debtor's Prison
"The confinement ... of any man in the sloth and darkness of a
prison, is a loss to the nation, and no gain to the creditor.
For, of the multitudes who are pining in those cells of misery, a
very small part is suspected of any fraudulent act by which they
retain what belongs to others. The rest are imprisoned by the
wantonness of pride, the malignity of revenge, or the acrimony of
disappointed expectation."
Johnson: Idler #22 (September 16, 1758)
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806. Debtor's Prison
"Since poverty is punished among us as a crime, it ought at least
to be treated with the same lenity as other crimes: the offender
ought not to languish at the will of him whom he has offended,
but to be allowed some appeal to the justice of his country.
There can be no reason why any debtor should be imprisoned, but
that he may be compelled to payment; and a term should therefore
be fixed, in which the creditor should exhibit his accusation of
concealed property. If such property can be discovered, let it
be given to the creditor; if the charge is not offered, or
cannot be proved, let the prisoner be dismissed."
Johnson: Idler #22 (September 16, 1758)
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807. Bankruptcy; Debt; Debtor's
Prison
"Those who made the laws have apparently supposed, that every
deficiency of payment is the crime of the debtor. But the truth
is, that the creditor always shares the act, and often more than
shares the guilt, of improper trust. It seldom happens that any
man imprisons another but for debts which he suffered to be
contracted in hope of advantage to himself, and for bargains in
which proportioned his own profit to his own opinion of the
hazard; and there is no reason, why one should punish the other
for a contract in which both concurred."
Johnson: Idler #22 (September 16, 1758)
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808. Debtor's Prison
"It is vain to continue an institution which experience shows to
be ineffectual. We have now imprisoned one generation of debtors
after another, but we do not find that their numbers lessen. We
have now learned, that rashness and imprudence will not be
deterred from taking credit; let us try whether fraud and
avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it."
Johnson: Idler #22 (September 16, 1758)
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1,523. Debtor's Prison
"It were happy if the prisons of the kingdom were filled only
with characters like these, men whom prosperity could not make
useful, and whom ruin cannot make wise: but there are among us
many who raise different sensations, many that owe their
present misery to the seductions of treachery, the strokes of
casualty, or the tenderness of pity; many whose sufferings
disgrace society, and whose virtues would adorn it..."
Johnson: Adventurer #53 (May 8, 1753), Misargyrus, a fictional
correspondent
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1,528. Debtor's Prison
"...nor can I look with equal hatred upon him, who, at the hazard
of his life, holds out his pistol and demands my purse, as on him
who plunders under the shelter of law, and by detaining my son or
my friend in prison, extorts from me the price of
their liberty."
Johnson: Adventurer #62 (June 9, 1753)
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1,683. Debtor's Prison
"We often look with indifference on the successive parts of that,
which, if the whole were seen together, would shake us with
emotion. A debtor is dragged to prison, pitied for a moment, and
then forgotten; another follows him, and is lost alike in the
caverns of oblivion; but when the whole mass of calamity rises up
at once, when twenty thousand reasonable beings are heard all
groaning in unnecessary misery, not by the infirmity of nature,
but the mistake or negligence of policy, who an forbear to pity
and lament, to wonder and abhor?"
Johnson: Idler #38 (January 6, 1759)
(When this essay was written, the "20,000" figure was confidently
published, but Johnson later found reason to doubt it.)
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1,685. Debtor's Prison
"Surely, he whose debtor has perished in prison, although he may
acquit himself of deliberate murder, must at least have his mind
clouded with discontent, when he considers how much another has
suffered from him; when he thinks on the wife bewailing her
husband, or the children begging the bread which their father
would have earned. If there are any made so obdurate by avarice
or cruelty as to revolve these consequences without dread or
pity, I must leave them to be awakened by some other power; for I
write only to human beings."
Johnson: Idler #38 (January 6, 1759)
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