Evening Post. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1909. THE SCREW OF IMPRISONMENT.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 64, 13 September 1909, Page 6

Evening Post. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1909. THE SCREW OF IMPRISONMENT.

The subject of Imprisonment for Debt was attracting a good deal of attention in New Zealand a few years ago, but has not seriously troubled the last two Parliaments. In Great Britain, however, it is still a live question, and the Select Committeo which has just reported to the House of Commons on the subject has had the matter in hand since last session. The conclusion of the committee is against the total abolition of imprisonment, on the ground that "the threat of imprisonment is considered to be the only forcible argument in the case of a certain class of debtors." The subject is full of difficulties, and the administration of a law which is suostantially the same in the two countries has led to far more serious abuses in Great Britain than in New Zealand. In ancient Greece and Ttaly, and in most other early civilisations, the person of the debtor was the ultimate security upon which the, creditor relied for the enforcement of his claims. A debtor who failed to carry out his contract might be adjudged the slave of the creditor, and in some cases the debtor's family passed into bondage at the same time. For this primitive mortgage "on the security of the body," as it was called, imprisonment by the State was at the instance of the creditor substituted as the remedy again the defaulting debtor, and even those whose antiquarian learning on the subject does not go beyond what can be derived from a perusal of Dickens's novels will have a good general idea both of the cruelty and extent of the process and of the late date to which it lingered in the Old Country. The theory of the English law since 1869, and of our own law since 1874, is that no man can be sent to gaol for m!ere impecuniosity, however heayy his obligations; but that there must be an element of fraud or contumacy in his default before this extreme step can be taken. If a man has incurred a debt by fraud, no honest man will object to the law treating the proceeding as an offence punishable by imprisonment, and for this reason, and also because the provision has been very little used, it has never, so far as we are aware, been challenged.. But the normal application of the screw of imprisonment is to the debtor who has incurred his liability in the ordinary way and fails to meet it. If the court, on an enquiry, which in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred is limited to an examination of the debtor ■-himself, finds that he has moans to satisfy a judgment which has been given against him, it may order him to be imprisoned. In practice the debtor is always allowed time to think it over before the pri&on door closes on him, and in the great majority of cases he escapes the extreme penalty by paying up. When he does not, he goes to gaol, not because he is an impecunious debtor, but because, having • the money wherewith to pay the debt, he refuses to do so. His offence is that he that he has refused to pay what the court has found that he can pay; that is to say, it is not poverty, but contempt of court Here again, on general principles, the law seems unexceptionable, but the ad- ' ministration imposes a difficult and invidious task, upon the courts, in the execution of which it is not to be wondered at if they occasionally make mistakes. In this country, at any rate, the mistakes seem to us to be *ew and far between, and they never seemed to us to be numerous or serious enough to justify the assumption that the law itself was vicious. The Legislature, however, cam© to a. different conclusion when, in 1900, it went through the farce of amending the Imprisonment for Debt Abolition Act by an Imprisonment for Debt Limitation Act. As in 1903, the law was practically restored to the position which it had previously occupied. We need not enquire into the nature and effect of the temporary relaxation of the procedure which was brought about by the Act of 1900. In England the abuse of the system has attained far larger proportions than it ever did here. Sales are effected to working., men or their wives by bagmen or pedlars who go from house to house, and often succeed in thus selling articles which are not really needed on the strength of the long credit which this system allows them to give. In the absence of the power of enforcing payment by judgment summons, these sales on time payment to the working classes would be reduced very near to vanishing point. On this account Judge Bray, of the Birmingham County Court, testified strongly before the House of Commons Committee in favour of repealing the Act. The worxing classes, he said, were, through the present law, "harassed with these burdens of debts for years, and matters were made worse by borrowing at high rates of interest. There were many Birmingham, working men who wanted to be protected against themselves and against their wives and families." These cases represent the worst feature of the present law as administered by the English courts; but the obvious objection; to repealing the law would be that the dishonest debtor who had no property to be levied upon could always snap his fingers in the face of his creditor. Neither in England nor in New Zealand, has any satisfactory midd'e course, been yet suggested.