It is bad to
creditors, because there is no security against preferences, no
principle of equality, and no encouragement for honest, fair, and
seasonable assignments of effects. As to the debtor, however good his
intentions or earnest his endeavors, it subdues his spirit and degrades
him in his own esteem; and if he attempts any thing for the purpose of
obtaining food and clothing for his family, he is driven to unworthy
shifts and disguises, to the use of other persons' names, to the
adoption of the character of agent, and various other contrivances, to
keep the little earnings of the day from the reach of his creditors.
Fathers act in the name of their sons, sons act in the name of their
fathers; all constantly exposed to the greatest temptation to
misrepresent facts and to evade the law, if creditors should strike. All
this is evil, unmixed evil. And what is it all for? Of what benefit to
anybody? Who likes it? Who wishes it? What class of creditors desire it?
What consideration of public good demands it?
Sir, we talk much, and talk warmly, of political liberty; and well we
may, for it is among the chief of public blessings. But who can enjoy
political liberty if he is deprived, permanently, of personal liberty,
and the exercise of his own industry and his own faculties? To those
unfortunate individuals, doomed to the everlasting bondage of debt, what
is it that we have free institutions of government? What is it that we
have public and popular assemblies? What is even this Constitution
itself to them, in its actual operation, and as we now administer it?
What is its aspect to them, but an aspect of stern, implacable severity?
an aspect of refusal, denial, and frowning rebuke? nay, more than that,
an aspect not only of austerity and rebuke, but, as they must think it,
of plain injustice also, since it will not relieve them, nor suffer
others to give them relief? What love can they feel towards the
Constitution of their country, which has taken the power of striking off
their bonds from their own paternal State governments, and yet,
inexorable to all the cries of justice and of mercy, holds it
unexercised in its own fast and unrelenting grasp? They find themselves
bondsmen, because we will not execute the commands of the Constitution;
bondsmen to debts they cannot pay, and which all know they cannot pay,
and which take away the power of supporting themselves.
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