policy could be reckoned by thousands locked in prisons built and guarded by the state.

The distinctions of age and sex were disregarded, and not even the decrepid patriot soldier could excite the pity or escape the rapacity of the merciless creditor. It almost surpasses belief that ever on American soil and under the sanction of American law, a helpless woman, innocent of fraud, with her infant child at the breast, could, for a pitiful debt of six dollars, be cast into prison and kept in close confinement.

And yet, not only was that done in 1824, in Massachusetts, but in 1818 a captain in the revolutionary army, then more than seventy years old, was kept in close confinement in a jail in New Hampshire for a debt of eight dollars, and had been for more than four years. 14 Niles Reg., 423; 26 ib., 400.

In the year 1828 there were confined in the prison of the city of New York, 1,085 persons for debt; and between the 6th of June, 1829, and the 24th of February, 1830, there were imprisoned for debt in the city of Philadelphia 817. persons, of whom 80 were committed for debts less than one dollar each. 38 Niles Reg., 174.

The right of personal liberty was held no more sacred in Great Britain. On the 29th of April, 1826, there were confined for debt in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland 3,820 persons, of whom 228 had been confined more than two years and 104 more than four years. 32 Niles Reg., 230.

But the day of deliverance for honest debtors in America was drawing nigh. From the boundless west a champion had come.

Born in 1781, in the then almost unbroken wilderness of Kentucky, inured to the hardships and privations of a pioneer life, possessing the lively sense of the right of personal liberty which that life of peculiar self-dependence always inspires, having the warmest sympathies for the laboring classes, to which he was attached both by inclination and habit, and wearing, not without pride, the laurels he had gained on the field of battle in defence of the liberties of his country, Col. RICHARD M. JOHNSON appeared in 1822, on the most conspicuous theater of the nation, the acknowledged and resolute champion of the long oppressed right of personal liberty-a right dear to all, but doubly dear to the poor.

Important reforms in the law of imprisonment for debt had been proposed in some of the states, and partially adopted in others; the subject, also, on account of the great severity of the times, had recently been brought forward in Congress; but there was wanting a public leader to enlighten, concentrate, extend and make effectual the favorable opinions in regard to it which had begun to be entertained in different sections of the country. Such a leader was found in Col. JOHNSON. On the 14th day of December, 1822, then a Senator from Kentucky, he introduced in the Senate of the United States a bill for the abolition of imprisonment for debt. The measure was delayed by various fortune for several years, but was finally successful. During its pendency before Congress it was defended with great zeal and ability by the distinguished mover, who plead earnestly for the natural rights of man, and

pointed with just pride to the example of his own noble state.

Although it was beyond the power of Congress to affect the condition of a debtor imprisoned under the authority of the several states, yet the agitation of the subject, the discussion which it elicited, and the action of Congress could not but exert a favorable influence upon the popular mind, and lead to an amelioration of the laws of the states; and so thought the imprisoned debtors of the city of New York, when on the 8th day of January, 1830, their prison resounded with the Kentuckian name, for his philanthropic labors in the cause of liberty.

Our prisons now, in most of the states, have no terrors for the poor and honest debtor; and it is just to record that to Col. JOHNSON, more than to any other statesman, are we indebted for the restoration of so much valuable ground to freedom.

In one of his reports to Congress, there is a sketch of the condition of the debtor in the republics of Greece and Rome, and of the origin and gradual extension of imprisonment for debt in England, drawn by a master hand, and which deserves to be preserved not only as evidence of the spirit and thoroughness with which the subject was discussed, but also as depicting in striking, and, with one or two immaterial exceptions, truthful colors the character of the thraldom from which thousands of our citizens have been delivered.

"In ancient Greece," says the report, "the power of creditors over their debtors was absolute; and, as in all cases where despotic control is tolerated, their

rapacity was boundless. They compelled their insolvent debtors to cultivate their lands like cattle, to perform the service of beasts of burden, and to transfer to them their sons and daughters, whom they exported as slaves to foreign countries.

"These acts of cruelty were tolerated in Athens, during her more barbarous state, and in perfect consonance with the character of a people who could elevate a Draco, and bow to his mandates, registered in blood. But the wisdom of Solon corrected the evil. Athens felt the benefit of the reform; and the pen of the historian has recorded the name of her lawgiver as the benefactor of man.

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'In ancient Rome, the condition of the unfortunate poor was still more abject. The cruelty of the Twelve Tables against insolvent debtors should be held as a beacon of warning to all modern nations. After judgment was obtained, thirty days of grace were allowed before a Roman was delivered into the

power of his creditor. After this period he was

retained in a private prison, with twelve ounces of rice for his daily sustenance. He might be bound with a chain of fifteen pounds weight; and his misery was three times exposed in the market-place, to excite the compassion of his friends. At the expiration of sixty days, the debt was discharged by the loss of liberty or life. The insolvent debtor was either put to death or sold in foreign slavery beyond the Tiber. But, if several creditors were alike obstinate and unrelenting, they might legally dismember his body, and satiate their revenge, by this horrid partition. Though the refinements of modern criti

cisms have endeavored to divest this ancient cruelty of its horror, the faithful Gibbon, who is not remarkable for his partiality to the poorer class, preferring the liberal sense of antiquity, draws this dark picture of the effect of giving the creditor power over the person of the debtor: No sooner was the Roman empire subverted than the delusion of Roman perfection began to vanish, and then the absurdity and cruelty of this system began to be exploded-a system which convulsed Greece and Rome, and filled the world with misery, and, without one redeeming benefit, could no longer be endured-and, to the honor of humanity, for about one thousand years, during the middle ages, imprisonment for debt was generally abolished. They seemed to have understood what, in more modern times, we are less ready to comprehend, that power in any degree, over the person of the debtor, is the same in principle, varying only in degree, whether it be to imprison, to enslave, to brand, to dismember, or to divide his body. But as the lapse of time removed to a greater distance the cruelty which had been suffered, the cupidity of the affluent found means again to introduce the system; but by such slow gradations, that the unsuspecting poor were scarcely conscious of the change.

"The history of English jurisprudence furnishes the remarkable fact, that, for many centuries, personal liberty could not be violated for debt. Property alone could be taken to satisfy a pecuniary demand. It was not until the reign of Henry III., in the thirteenth century, that the principle of imprisonment for debt was recognized in the land of our