IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 883, 6 September 1879, Page 2

IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT.

Mb. William Hutchinson m his election speeches, says the Chronicle has dealt trenchantly with imprisonment for debt under the judgment summons system. We are entirely at one with him when • he says that this is virtually " one law for the rich and another forthe poor." As a matter of fact, we, m Wellington for * instance, ftever see a man whose business has been on a large scale sent to the common gaol like a malefactor, though scarcely a week passes without some poor wretch, whose transctions have been on the smallest possible scale, being consigned to r the debtor's prison. The man who has run up debts to the amount of thousands of pounds, makes an assignment of his estate, , pays perhaps a shilling m the £. and is set free again to prey upon society. But the humble individual who has accumulated a liability bf fif ty shillings is sent to gaol unless he can bring satisfactory proof that he is unable to pay! : Now this proof is often practically impossible, and there is not one case out of eVefry fifty that comes before the Court where the proof produced is deemed "satisfactory." It generally happens that these small debtors have large families, who are thus deprieved of their only means of support, the result being that of intense misery to a large number of innocent persons. It is well said that r a friend m need is a friend indeed ;" and we are sure the . humbler classes of the community will duly recognise the fact that Mr. William Hutchinson is the only one of the candidates for Wellington City that has tried to aid them by advocating the abolition of the law which grinds the faces of the poor whilst it fails to touch the men who do a large business and smash. Credit is given to a man on account of the property he possesses ; therefore his property, not his person, should be liable to meet debts which he his incurred. '. .