IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 241 Hence it is that, every man judging that to be the most deadly offence by which he is himself a sufferer, the Parliament has per- mitted the statute book to be loaded with the penalty of death for upwards of two hundred offences.* When Burke went down to Bristol in 1780 to address his constituents, a portion of his speech was occupied with an elaborate defence of his votes in favour of a bill intro- duced into the House of Commons during the previous session, dealing with the law relating to imprisonment for imprison- debt. It proposed to restrict in some measure the unlimited debt power, then exercised by creditors, of detaining a debtor in prison as long as the debt was unpaid. Reform of that kind was not in favour among the commercial classes of Bristol, who probably regarded it as calculated to prejudice their securities. The absurdity as well as the injustice of the system was exposed by Burke in a few sentences, which display his intuitive perception of principles. In the first place, he said, every man was presumed by the law to be sol- vent — a presumption quite at variance with facts; and secondly, imprisonment for debt was inflicted, not because an impartial judge considered it necessary, but because an interested and irritated individual chose to demand it ; the judge being a passive instrument in his hands. To such an extent had this abuse been carried that the gaols were Abuse of everywhere crowded with miserable debtors, and Parliament crwutors,^ was frequently obliged to interfere. For a long time pre- viously, '* Acts of Grace'* had been passed once, and latterly twice, in every Parliament, by which the gaol-doors were thrown open and their inmates released. These Acts were described as a dishonourable invention by which, not from humanity, not from pih'cy, but merely because we have not room enough to hold these victims of the absurdity of our laws, we turn loose upon the •• Acta of publick three or four thousand naked wretches corrupted by the °"^^" iiabita, debased by the ignominy of a prison.
- Rosselly English GovemmeDt and Conatitution, p. 242.
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