Whatever body, and
whatever society, wastes more than it acquires, must gradually decay;
and every being that continues to be fed, and ceases to labour, takes
away something from the publick stock.
The confinement, therefore, of any man in the sloth and darkness of a
prison, is a loss to the nation, and no gain to the creditor. For of the
multitudes who are pining in those cells of misery, a very small part is
suspected of any fraudulent act by which they retain what belongs to
others. The rest are imprisoned by the wantonness of pride, the
malignity of revenge, or the acrimony of disappointed expectation.
If those, who thus rigorously exercise the power which the law has put
into their hands, be asked, why they continue to imprison those whom
they know to be unable to pay them; one will answer, that his debtor
once lived better than himself; another, that his wife looked above her
neighbours, and his children went in silk clothes to the dancing-school;
and another, that he pretended to be a joker and a wit. Some will reply,
that if they were in debt, they should meet with the same treatment;
some, that they owe no more than they can pay, and need therefore give
no account of their actions.
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