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[XVIII]

only to fraud and to crime.

The effect of the indiscriminate imprisonment of the honest and the dishonest, the debtor and the felon, is in many respects injurious to the morals and welfare of the community.

It disheartens and paralizes the debtor, renders him less able to pay his debts, to support himself or family; and deprives society of the benefits that might be derived from his industry and talents.

Imprisonment, as a punishment, is divested of the odium and disgrace, which should ever attend it, and thus becomes less efficacious in deterring the unprincipled from the commission of fraud upon their creditors, as well as from other offences.

In order to remedy these evils, let it be the object of the law, while it enforces it sanctions, to make a distinction between poverty and fraud, misfortune and crime.

If the debtor be dishonest, and has secreted or transferred his property, with intent to defraud his creditors, let the law, while it protects the poor and honest from arrest and imprisonment for debts hereafter contracted, provide a remedy, more scrutinizing than the present one, for the detection of the fraud, and a compulsory process against the fraudulent debtor, by which payment of his debts may be more effectually secured and enforced.

In connection with this subject, the assignments of property, so frequently made of late by insolvent debtors for the benefit of their creditors, may be mentioned, as requiring some salutary regulations to be established by law for the equitable distribution of the property assigned among all the creditors, who after notice shall assent to the assignment.

By the mutual consent of the debtor and his creditors these assignments may thus be made to operate as a voluntary insolvent law, and promote in most cases the interests of all the parties concerned.

Unjust preferences of favored creditors made in these assignments