should remember how comfortable he will
feel when it is all over. For my part, I don't
care how often I have to face the court in
Basinghall-street, provided that I leave behind
me a good heavy load of debt each time. There
are rich and poor bankrupts in this world, just
as there are rich and poor men, good and bad
horses, or cheap and dear houses. Is not this
a great commercial country, and ought we not
to measure everything in the land by the good
old English standard of £.s. d.? Can a poor
man buy the advowson of a comfortable living
in the Church? Could any one without means
obtain promotion in the army? Would it be
possible for the best sailor amongst the post
captains of the navy to accept the command of
a line-of-battle ship, or of a crack frigate, unless
he had from five hundred to eight hundred
pounds at command with which to fit and
furnish his cabins? Could any lad be educated
at Sandhurst for the army, at the universities
for the Church, be articled to a solicitor for the
law, or get his fees paid to be called to the bar,
unless he had money, or, what is the same
thing, friends who would lend him money?
Then why should there not be a difference
between rich and poor bankrupts? Pauper
bankrupts don't fare well in this country, as you will
see by the following account of a poor man's
affairs when he got into difficulties, and which
is only a fair sample of what happens in a score
of cases every day in London.

The master carpenter, who worked for me,
had a foreman named Stevens, a quiet, respectable
man as ever lived, but terribly weighted,
so to speak, with an infirm wife and five young
children. Stevens used to earn his regular
thirty-five shillings a week as wages, and never
went near a public-house in his life. But somehow
or other, what with having to pay doctors'
fees and bills for medicine, and no one to look
properly after his house, he got behind the
world, and never seemed to recover the
distance he had lost. He worked hard at odd
jobs when he could get them, and did his best
to pay what he owed  but as fast as he
stopped up one leak, the water flowed in at
another hole. At last a grocer, to whom he owed
ten pounds odd, bothered his life out one day,
and made some unpleasant remarks about people
taking what they could not pay for. Stevens
retorted, lost his temper, and gave the fellow
a bit of his mind. The other, out of revenge,
took out a county court summons, and Stevens
had to appear at the court, losing thereby a
day's wages, and getting into his master's bad
graces for not being at his post to look after
the men working under him.

When his case was called, the judge asked
Stevens whether he admitted the debt. He
said he did, but that he had not the means to
pay it except by instalments, for he had a sick
wife and a number of young children, and his
wages were only thirty-five shillings a week.
The judge asked him how much he could afford
to pay a week towards liquidating the debt;
and he replied that he could not give more than
five shillings a week. To this his creditor, who
was present, objected, saying that at that rate
it would take forty weeks to clear off the score.
The judge then said that he must pay ten
shillings a week, and so the judgment was made
out—the terms and conditions being, that if any
one payment was behindhand, execution might
be issued against the debtor for all that was
due. Stevens left the court protesting that he
would do his best, but that he feared he could
not keep up the payments.

The next day he told his master what had
happened, saying at the same time that any one
of his creditors might serve him the same way,
for he owed altogether to different tradesmen
about thirty pounds. His master recommended
him to file his petition as a bankrupt, and
go through the court, but to do this he
needed the sum of from twenty to twenty-
five pounds; and, as he said, even if he could
get the money—which he had no chance whatever
of obtaining—it would have been better
to pay his debts with it than to go through the
court.

Por three or four weeks Stevens managed to
keep up his payments to the county court,
although in doing so he incurred debts
elsewhere. At last he fell behindhand with his
instalments, and one fine morning a county
court bailiff walked into the shop where he was
at work, and took him off to Whitecross-street.
He was not locked up because he owed the
money, but was sentenced to thirty days'
imprisonment as a punishment for contempt of
court, in not obeying the order he had received
to pay the debt in certain instalments. Of
course his being thirty days in prison did not
mend matters. He lost his wages, and lost his
place as foreman. His master was a kind-
hearted man, and helped the sick wife and
children all he could whilst Stevens was in
Whitecross-street. Moreover, although he had filled
up his place as foreman, he kept an opening for
him as a workman, and when he got clear of
prison Stevens had regular work given him,
although at reduced wages. He now only got
twenty-eight shillings a week. But the most
curious part of the law for poor debtors is that by
imprisonment from a county court order, the
debt is not purged. Stevens came out of
Whitecross-street at the end of thirty days, but he
owed the money just as much as he did before,
although of course he was now far less able to
pay it. He worked on under his old master
for a few weeks, was unable to pay more than
one instalment of the debt, and was again
imprisoned, at the demand of the same
creditor, and again for " contempt of court."
This time he was sentenced to forty days'
imprisonment.

Once more his master helped his family, and
once more at the end of forty days did Stevens
resume his work in the old place, worse off, and
more broken in spirit than ever. Again, for
the third time, did the same creditor get him.
locked up for " contempt of court," and a third
time had he to remain a prisoner for the same