age, another speculation, some new turn of fortune, may possibly relieve him, and bring him out a man of property. On one side, poverty for life is his only prospect, and only destiny, so far at least as the law allows him any ground of hope; and on the other, there is some chance of escape. Now, Sir, I will ask any sensible man, if a state of law could be devised more likely to encourage headlong enterprise and rash speculation. Can you place a man in a condition where he will be more likely to throw himself upon desperate chances, and to plunge deeper and deeper?

We are not without experience on this point, and much instruction may be gathered from one memorable instance. The great fire in New York is supposed to have destroyed property to the amount of twenty or twenty-five millions of dollars, in houses, warehouses, and merchandise. But nobody failed. This is a fact full of admonition. I ask attention to it. Nobody failed, notwithstanding this immense loss of property; and what was the reason? No one doubts that hundreds were rendered deeply insolvent by this so extensive calamity. Why, then, did they not stop? The answer is, that the extent of their losses was, in many cases, known only to themselves, and they concealed their own true condition. And they had strong motives for so doing. If they announced themselves insolvent, and stopped, nothing was before them and their families, for their whole lives, but poverty and distress. On the other hand, there was a hope that, if they could maintain their credit, they might, by extreme exertion and extreme good-fortune, extricate themselves. On the strength of that hope, slight as it was, they buoyed themselves up, and tried to stem the current which was carrying them, notwithstanding all their struggles, to utter and desperate bankruptcy. They paid exorbitant interest for money; they suffered themselves to be jewed in every dark alley in the city; they sacrificed every thing to maintain their credit, and in the end, when every thing else was gone, credit went also. And when they finally failed, where was the fund for dividends to creditors? Why, Sir, it had gone to the pocket of the capitalist; it had been devoured by the voracity of usury. I know of one instance in which a merchant paid more than fifty thousand dollars extra and unlawful interest, for the purpose of upholding his credit, and failed after all. And there are well-authenticated

cases of payment of still larger sums. Boundless extras and gross exorbitancy were thus suffered to eat up what belonged to creditors.

Now, Sir, would it not have been better for all parties, and for the public, that these unfortunate persons should have stopped payment the morning after the fire, assigned all that was left of their property, and received a discharge? And this, be assured, many of them would have done, if the law had provided that by so doing they should obtain that discharge. But there was no such legal provision; they had no hope on that side, but from the consent of all their creditors, and they believed that all would not consent; and therefore there was no way left to them but to keep on, wading into deeper water at every step, and stopping at last with nothing to divide except among indorsers.

Mr. President, we hear it frequently said, that honest debtors may always obtain discharges from their creditors upon an honest assignment of their effects. This is the language of the memorial of the Board of Trade, and this is the language, especially, of the letter to the honorable member from New York, which has been read. Sir, such is not my opinion, nor the fruit of my experience. I believe that creditors are generally humane and just; but there will always, or often, be some who are selfish, unjust, or indifferent. There will be some who will not compound. The man, therefore, who would stop, since he knows he is insolvent, if he could be sure of a discharge, cannot be sure of it. He may be as honest as possible; he may strip himself of the last farthing; but yet he cannot promise himself any release. It is notorious that some creditors will and do hold on; and as to the debtor, this is as decisive as if all did so. Now, Sir, this bill proposes an object to a man whose circumstances have become insolvent, and makes that object sure. tells him, by way of inducing him to stop in season, and before he has wasted his property, that by assigning it, and acting honestly in all things, he shall have a discharge; that no unreasonable creditor shall be able to prevent it; and with this certainty before him he will stop in season, or, at least, he will be much more likely to stop in season than he is at present.

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This, then, Sir, is the second benefit which this bill confers on creditors. And who will deny that it is a clear and a great

benefit? It holds out a strong inducement to debtors to stop in season, and to distribute their property honestly, while they have yet property to distribute, and before they have wasted it all in useless sacrifices to retrieve their affairs.

But there is a third benefit which this bill confers on creditors. It takes away the power and the motive of concealment. Under the present state of things, the motives of an insolvent man lead in the opposite direction of his duties. Every thing is brought to bear against his honesty and integrity. He has every temptation to conceal his property; and there are many ways in which he may conceal it. If he surrenders all, he cannot be discharged, and therefore will be in no condition to earn any thing more. He may, therefore, not choose to surrender, and may set his creditors at defiance. I have heard of an instance in which a man failed for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He showed assets to the amount of eighty thousand, and there was no reason to suppose that he had any more, or had acted dishonestly in any way. He offered to give up all for a discharge; but while most of his creditors were willing to discharge him on such a surrender, some were not. A year afterwards he renewed his offer of giving up all, but his property had by this time become diminished by ten thousand dollars, so that he had but seventy thousand to offer; and the obstinate creditors of last year were now willing to take what was then offered, but would not take less; and so the process of offer and refusal went on; and the last I heard of the case, this proceeding was likely to result in the creditors' getting nothing, and the debtor's becoming a beggar. If there be not many cases exactly like this, or quite so strong in all their circumstances, there are still very many which much resemble it; and this bill will put an end to them all.

Sir, the great motive by which the debtor is to be brought to act honestly and fairly is his hope of a discharge. This is to him every thing. Hardly any earthly object, in his view, can be greater. It is this which is to reinstate him in a condition of effort and action. Creditors can obtain a benefit, by means of this, far superior to any good which they can ever get by holding on to his future earnings. Generally, this last right is good for nothing to the mass of creditors, though sometimes an individual may profit by it. In some cases, it is true, where the

amount of debt is small, the bankrupt will struggle hard to earn the means of payment, that he may afterwards work for himself. But if the amount be large, he will make no such effort. He will not work altogether for his creditors. Not only will he not do that, but, as I have already said, he is under strong temptation to retain and conceal what he already possesses. I need not say of what evil consequence all this is. I need not say what ill-will naturally grows up between debtors and creditors standing in this relation. The creditor thinks his debtor unjust and roguish; the debtor regards his creditor as remorseless and cruel; and mutual reproaches and deep bitterness of feeling are often the result. How much better, Sir, every way, that the law, by its timely interference, should give the debtor's property to whom it belongs, and set him free to begin a new career of industry and usefulness!

And, in the fourth place, Sir, this bill gives the creditors an equal distribution of the debtor's effects. In the present state of things, a bankrupt may pay one creditor all, and another nothing; and he who gets nothing may, perhaps, fail himself, when, if he could have received his just proportion, he might have been saved. The great interest of the mass of creditors is, that the debtor's effects shall be equally divided among them all. At present, there is no security for such equal division, and this bill. proposes to give such security. And I repeat, that, if any thing ever comes of the power of a creditor to hold on upon his debt, in the hope of getting something out of the future earnings of a notoriously insolvent debtor, it is usually not the mass of creditors, but only some one of them, who gets any thing; and that one, very likely, may be he who deserves least.

These, Mr. President, are the securities, the new securities, the important securities, which this bill furnishes to the creditors. If there be nothing in them, let that be shown; but until it is shown, let it not be said that there is nothing in this bill for the creditors' benefit.

And, Mr. President, these provisions belong to the voluntary, as well as the involuntary, parts of the bill. The real reciprocity, the real equivalent, must be looked for in the provisions made for conducting the proceedings, and not in the source in which the proceedings originate. Suppose creditors to have ever so full a power of declaring their debtors bankrupts; this would

not avail them, unless proper provision were made for a full assignment and fair distribution of the property. On the other hand, if such provision be made, the creditor is secured, although the proceedings originate with the debtor himself. It may be wise, or it may be unwise, to retain the coercive clauses; but whether retained or not, they do not constitute the true equivalent or reciprocal benefit of the creditor.

The real state of the case stands thus. The benefit of a debtor consists in obtaining a discharge; this he shall have, but, in order to obtain it, he shall give the creditors the benefit of a full and honest surrender of all his property; he shall show, if a merchant, that he has kept proper and regular books of account; it must appear that there has been no false swearing on his part, or the concealment of any part of his property; that he has not admitted any false or fictitious debt against his estate; that he has not applied any trust money to his own use; and that he has not paid any debt by way of preferring one creditor to another, in contemplation of bankruptcy. And the Senate, if they see fit, may insert that the consent of creditors shall be necessary to his discharge, though, for one, I should never agree to that, without reserving a right to the debtor to summon dissenting creditors to appear before the proper tribunal, and show some just reason for withholding a discharge.

I have now, Sir, gone through with all that I proposed to say upon the voluntary part of this bill. My undertaking was, to show that that part of the bill does, by itself, and of and in itself alone, contain provisions of the highest importance to creditors and the security of creditors; and, on the various points which I have noticed, I am ready to meet any gentleman who may choose to contest the matter. The opinions which I have expressed I hold with confidence, and am willing to defend them, and to submit them to the judgment of all men of experience.

My second general proposition is, that, whether it were advisable, on the whole, or not, to retain the compulsory part, yet that part does not give any important addition to the security of creditors; and that therefore it is not of great consequence whether it be retained or not.

In the first place, let us remember that the form of proceeding is the same, after its commencement, whether it be begun by the