boy whose ancestors were descended from the
earliest Normans; I do not ask for positive
affection, but only for a slight diminution of
contempt. Spoiled child of trade, and chosen
one of the law, let thy commercial father
know thy wants and wishes, and he is content.

But Shadrach, junior, when you stand up
in court, pleading infancy with all the childish
grace of an Israelite that knows no guile, I
am amused at so clever an adaptation of
Christian customs, but I am astonished at the
learned credulity of the Bench. It is true
that your people have no registry of baptisms,
and everything, therefore, depends
upon your own assertion; but I have known
you so many years about town, I have
watched your fully developed frame standing
out prominently in most places of public
resort; I have witnessed your intellectual
keenness in places where keenness was no
rare quality, that, in my eyes, your back is
beginning to bend, and your hair becoming
silvered with grey, and I marvel much that
a paternal law gathers you as a trusting,
trusted innocent in the folds of its sheltering
arms. There are many octogenarian debtors
upon my books, or rather the books of the
late John Smirker, my beloved Shadrach, who
are more in need of legal protection than
your youthful self.

The next rose which the law has planted
in the path of debt—the next thorn which it
has planted in the path of credit—is the
Statute of Limitations. A man of untutored
reasoning powers, whose faculties had not
been sharpened into an unnatural state of
acuteness by legal study, would suppose that
the longer a debt stood unpaid, the more
would the obligation be increased. He would
be astonished, therefore, to find that just at
the moment when he was about to claim an
old debt with interest, simple and compound,
and was probably going to reproach the
debtor with keeping out of the way so long—
that what he considered to be a moral crime
was an act of well calculated thriftiness,
having the effect of annulling the claim
according to act of parliament. It would be
difficult to explain to such a man upon what
principle an act was framed, that allowed
every debtor to go free who contrived to keep
out of the way of his creditor six years. The
wonderful doctrine that the more you wrong
a man in trade the more you may being
embodied in a statute having legal force, is
encouraging to that large class that I call
debtors; but is not so encouraging to that
other large, and very useful, tax-paying class
that I call creditors. The inference is, that
the State wishes to cultivate the first at the
expense of the second. Or, perhaps, it is
only a masked movement intended by
discouraging the second to destroy the first?
When the Right Honourable Lord Battleaxe,
K.C.B., takes, as a rule, from his tradesmen,
five years' credit, he has only to stretch the
period one year more to carry it into eternity.

I certainly was delighted to find the Reverend
Origen Bilk, M.A., whom I—or rather
the late John Smirker—had nursed through
the different stages of fighting Oxonian,
plucked undergraduate, crammed B.A. down,
to the living of St. Vitus-in-the-Fens, pleading
"statute run," and declining to pay for the
college extravagances which he had indulged
in with such vigorous prodigality. It is a
good sign when a man—especially a clergyman
—so far reforms the errors of his youth,
as to turn his back upon his early dissipations,
even to the extent of repudiating payment
for them. If ever the protecting shield
of legal mercy was righteously extended over
the prostrate form of the suffering debtor, it
is in the case of the Reverend Origen Bilk,
M.A. He has suffered much from the ruthless
hands of the importunate creditor, who
insisted upon clothing him with the richest
purple and the finest linen, feeding him with
the daintiest viands, and nourishing him with
the rarest wines, and who now would seek
him out in the calm seclusion of his clerical
hermitage, and who did not a considerate
law most benevolently interfere would destroy
the unruffled serenity of that meditative
mind, which now dwells upon things that are
higher than the tailor's bill which perisheth.

The same tenderness to debtors who keep
out of the way, distinguishes even some of
the severest laws which have been the product
of our recent legislation. The debtor is
the darling of the law, and it cannot find it
in its heart to deal harshly with him. The
new Bills of Exchange Act, which allows me
the tyranny of a judgment in the short period
of twelve days, supposing that my victim has
no valid plea or answer that he is not
indebted to me, breaks down entirely if my
victim keeps out of the way for six clear
months; and my thirst for vengeance is
tantalised with the tortures of the old, tardy,
and expensive mode of proceeding. If I
apply for the more humble assistance of the
County Court, I find I have still many weeks
to wait before the pressure of business will
allow of my obtaining a hearing. When my
victim comes up and tells a plaintive story of
his inability to pay in less than a given time
of very long duration, the judge, imbued with
the proper spirit of the law, inclines his ear
to the dictates of mercy, checks the eager
tyranny of the heartless creditor, and grants
an order to pay in twelve easy instalments.
When the time for the first and second
payment has long passed without my victim
making any attempt to keep to his bond, I
have then the option of procuring what is
called a judgment summons, which, if I am,
fortunate enough to get it served personally
upon my victim, within a certain time, will
fix another remote day for a new trial, when,
my victim will have to show cause why he
failed in his contract. If the claim should be
under twenty pounds, and my victim be a
single young man victim, residing in furnished