admonition is not to prepare me to escape from their decree, but to meet it. I have lived a fulness of days and of glory : what is there that Cæsar has not done with as much honour as ancient heroes?-Cæsar has not yet died! Cæsar is prepared to die.'

Spectator, No. 374.]

[May 9, 1712.

No. 17. On Debt.

Caput domina venale sub hasta.

Juv. Sat. iii. 33.

Passing under Ludgate" the other day, I heard a voice bawling for charity, which I thought I had somewhere heard before. Coming near to the grate, the prisoner called me by my name, and desired I would throw something into the box; I was out 10 of countenance for him, and did as he bid me, by putting in half-a-crown. I went away, reflecting upon the strange constitution of some men, and how meanly they behave themselves in all sorts of conditions. The person who begged of me is now, as I take it, fifty: I was well acquainted with him till about the age of twenty-five; at which time a good estate fell to him by the death of a relation. Upon coming to this unexpected good fortune, he ran into all the extravagances imaginable; was frequently in drunken disputes, broke drawers' heads, talked and swore loud, was unmannerly to those above him, and 20 insolent to those below him. I could not but remark, that it

was the same baseness of spirit which worked in his behaviour in both fortunes: the same little mind was insolent in riches, and shameless in poverty. This accident made me muse upon the circumstance of being in debt in general, and solve in my mind what tempers were most apt to fall into this error of life, as well as the misfortune it must needs be to languish under such pressures. As for myself, my natural aversion to that sort of conversation which makes a figure with the generality of mankind, exempts me from any temptations to expense; and 30 all my business lies within a very narrow compass, which is only to give an honest man who takes care of my estate, proper vouchers for his quarterly payments to me, and observe what

linen my laundress brings and takes away with her once a week. My steward brings his receipt ready for my signing; and I have a pretty implement with the respective names of shirts, cravats, handkerchiefs, and stockings, with proper numbers, to know how to reckon with my laundress. This being almost all the business I have in the world for the care of my own affairs, I am at full leisure to observe upon what others do, with relation to their equipage and economy.

When I walk the street and observe the hurry about me in 10 this town,

Where, with like haste, through diff'rent ways they run;

Some to undo, and some to be undone !

I say, when I behold this vast variety of persons and humours, with the pains they both take for the accomplishment of the ends mentioned in the above verses of Denham", I cannot much wonder at the endeavour after gain, but am extremely astonished that men can be so insensible of the danger of running into debt. One would think it impossible a man who is given to contract debts should know, that his creditor 2c has, from that moment in which he transgresses payment, so much as that demand comes to, in his debtor's honour, liberty, and fortune. One would think he did not know that his creditor can say the worst thing imaginable of him, to wit, 'That he is unjust,' without defamation; and can seize his person, without being guilty of an assault. Yet such is the loose and abandoned turn of some men's minds, that they can live under these constant apprehensions, and still go on to increase the cause of them. Can there be a more low and servile condition, than to be ashamed or afraid to see any one man breath30 ing? Yet he that is much in debt, is in that condition with relation to twenty different people. There are indeed circumstances wherein men of honest natures may become liable to debts, by some unadvised behaviour in any great point of their life, or mortgaging a man's honesty as a security for that of another, and the like; but these instances are so particular and circumstantiated, that they cannot come within general considerations. For one such case as one of these, there are ten where a man, to keep up a farce of retinue and grandeur within his own house, shall shrink at the expectation of surly demands 40 at his doors. The debtor is the creditor's criminal; and all the

officers of power and state, whom we behold make so great a figure, are no other than so many persons in authority to make good his charge against him. Human society depends upon his having the vengeance law allots him; and the debtor owes his liberty to his neighbour, as much as the murderer does his life to his prince.

Our gentry are, generally speaking, in debt; and many families have put it into a kind of method of being so from generation to generation. The father mortgages when his son 10 is very young; and the boy is to marry, as soon as he is at age, to redeem it and find portions for his sisters. This, forsooth, is no great inconvenience to him; for he may keep a public table, or feed dogs, like a worthy English gentleman, till he has out-run half his estate, and leave the same encumbrance upon his first-born, and so on; till one man of more vigour than ordinary goes quite through the estate, or some man of sense comes into it, and scorns to have an estate in partnership, that is to say, liable to the demand or insult of any man living. There is my friend Sir Andrew", though for many years a great 20 and general trader, was never the defendant in a law suit, in all

the perplexity of business, and the iniquity of mankind at present; no one had any colour for the least complaint against his dealings with him. This is certainly as uncommon, and in its proportion as laudable in a citizen, as it is in a general never to have suffered a disadvantage in fight. How different from this gentleman is Jack Truepenny", who has been an old acquaintance of Sir Andrew and myself from boys, but could never learn our caution. Jack has an unresisting good nature, which makes him incapable of having a property in 30 any thing. His fortune, his reputation, his time, and his capacity, are at any man's service that comes first. When he was at school he was whipped thrice a week for faults he took upon him to excuse others; since he came into the business of the world, he has been arrested twice or thrice a-year for debts he had nothing to do with, but as surety for others; ...' Jack had a good estate left him, which came to nothing; because he believed all who pretended to demands upon it. This easiness and credulity destroy all the other merit he has; and he has all his life been a sacrifice to others, without ever receiving 40 thanks, or doing one good action.

I will end this discourse with a speech which I heard Jack make to one of his creditors (of whom he deserved gentler usage) after lying a whole night in custody at his suit.

'Sir, your ingratitude for the many kindnesses I have done you, shall not make me unthankful for the good you have done me, in letting me see there is such a man as you in the world. I am obliged to you for the diffidence I shall have all the rest of my life: I shall hereafter trust no man so far as to be in his debt.'

Spectator, No. 82.]

[June 4, 1711.

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No. 18. On the Condition of Bankruptcy.

De quo libelli in celeberrimis locis proponuntur, huic ne perire quidem tacite conceditur.-TULL.

Otway, in his tragedy of Venice Preserved, has described the misery of a man whose effects are in the hands of the law, with great spirit. The bitterness of being the scorn and laughter of base minds, the anguish of being insulted by men hardened beyond the sense of shame or pity, and the injury of a man's fortune being wasted, under pretence of justice, are excellently aggravated in the following speech of Pierre to Jaffier :

I pass'd this very moment by thy doors,

And found them guarded by a troop of villains;
The sons of public rapine were destroying.
They told me, by the sentence of the law,
They had commission to seize all thy fortune:
Nay more, Priuli's cruel hand had signed it.
Here stood a ruffian with a horrid face,
Lording it o'er a pile of massy plate,
Tumbled into a heap for public sale.
There was another making villanous jests
At thy undoing. He had ta'en possession

Of all thy ancient most domestic ornaments;

Rich hangings intermix'd and wrought with gold;
The very bed, which on thy wedding night
Receiv'd thee to the arms of Belvidera,

The scene of all thy joys, was violated

By the coarse hands of filthy dungeon villains,
And thrown amongst the common lumber.

Nothing indeed can be more unhappy than the condition of bankruptcy. The calamity which happens to us by ill fortune, or by the injury of others, has in it some consolation; but what arises from our own misbehaviour, or error, is the state of the most exquisite sorrow. When a man considers not only an ample fortune, but even the very necessaries of life, his pretence to food itself, at the mercy of his creditors, he cannot but look upon himself in the state of the dead, with his case thus much worse, that the last office is performed by his adversaries instead 10 of his friends. From this hour the cruel world does not only take possession of his whole fortune, but even of every thing else which had no relation to it. All his indifferent actions have new interpretations put upon them; and those whom he has favoured in his former life, discharge themselves of their obligations to him, by joining in the reproaches of his enemies. It is almost incredible that it should be so; but it is too often seen that there is a pride mixed with the impatience of the creditor; and there are who would rather recover their own by the downfall of a prosperous man, than be discharged to the common satis20 faction of themselves and their creditors. The wretched man, who was lately master of abundance, is now under the direction of others; and the wisdom, economy, good sense, and skill in human life before, by reason of his present misfortune, are of no use to him in the disposition of any thing. The incapacity of an infant or a lunatic is designed for his provision and accommodation; but that of a bankrupt, without any mitigation in respect of the accidents by which it arrived, is calculated for his utter ruin, except there be a remainder ample enough, after the discharge of his creditors, to bear also the expense of rewarding 30 those by whose means the effect of all this labour was transferred from him. This man is to look on and see others giving directions upon what terms and conditions his goods are to be purchased; and all this usually done, not with an air of trustees to dispose of his effects, but destroyers to divide and tear them to pieces.

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There is something sacred in misery to great and good minds; for this reason all wise lawgivers have been extremely tender how they let loose even the man who has right on his side, to act with any mixture of resentment against the defendant. Virtuous and modest men, though they be used with some