CHAPTER XV

REMEDIES OF TO-DAY

Ring out the feud of rich and poor; Ring in redress to all mankind.

TENNYSON: "In Memoriam."

When Absalom cried out in a loud voice, "Oh, that I were made judge in the land that every man which hath any suit or cause might come unto me, and I would do him justice!" he was, as we should say nowadays, playing to the gallery. Yet, sincerely uttered, what a noble wish it was. Let it stand as an expression of the still unfulfilled ideal of judicial duty and public service which we owe to-day to the poor of this country. Every man has not as yet a judicial system that does justice to every man.

And I fear that Absalom's fine saying was only an election cry in his campaign against his father, recalling to the voters perhaps David's inconsistency in the theory and practice of justice in the matter of Uriah and his wife. In those days the King, the Lawgiver, and the Judge were but one person, so that to be made Judge was to be made Lawgiver and King, and you not only administered the laws but made them as you went along. Absalom was only an office seeker, but his election address contained a noble sentiment.

Nowadays the Judges are merely servants of the law, like policemen and bailiffs and the hangman. Nor does the King make the laws, nor are there in theory any professional Lawgivers. The people--or at least so many of the people as get on the register and trouble to vote--make their own laws, or are supposed to do so. At least they have the power of choosing their representatives and servants to make what laws they want.

If, therefore, a sufficient number of men in the street greatly desired amendment of the law in this or that direction, I have no doubt it would come about. But very few of the problems that trouble me come before the eyes of the average man in the course of his daily life, and he is scarcely to be blamed for not trying to mend that which he has not observed is broken and worn out.

One man may know at first hand the story of a home ruined by reckless credit and imprisonment for debt, another may know a cruel case of lives blighted by our unequal divorce laws, a third may have seen the sad spectacle of an injured workman sinking from honest independence to neurasthenic malingering by reason of the poisonous litigious atmosphere of the Workmen's Compensation Act.

I can never understand why men and women hunger after the tedious, unreal, drab scandals portrayed in a repertory theatre when they could take a hand at unravelling the real problem plays of life in the courts and alleys of the city they live in. Real misery and wretchedness is at least as pathetic as the sham article, and if you do your theatre-going in a real police court you may learn to become a better citizen.

Not that I advise all men and women to spend their leisure in these squalid surroundings. I recognise that the man in the street cannot at first hand study all these problems, and that is why I have set down something of the disabilities of the poor under the law, in the hope that my political pastors and masters may take an interest in these domestic reforms.

There are many, I know, who think that a judge, like a good child, should in matters of this kind be seen and not heard. But for my part I am not of that opinion, for if a judicial person knows that the machine he is working is out of date and consuming unnecessary fuel, blacking out the moral ether with needless foul smoke, and if, moreover, he thinks he knows how much of this can be put right at small expense, should he not mention the matter not only to his foreman and the frock coat brigade in the office--who are the folk who supply the bad coal--but to the owner of the machine who has to pay for it and live with it--the man in the street?

Now there is a great deal that might be done to make the law less harsh to the poor without any very elaborate legislation, and certainly without any of those absurd inquiries and commissions which are the stones the latter-day lawgivers throw at the poor when they ask for the bread of justice.

I like to read of Lord Brougham, as far back as 1830, shivering to atoms the house of fraud and iniquity known as the Court of Chancery. I like to picture him pointing his long, lean, skinny fingers at his adversaries, and to see the abuses he cursed falling dead at his feet. Could he have had his way, the very County Court system which we have to-day would have sprung into being within a few months of his taking his seat on the woolsack, and he would have instituted Courts of Conciliation for the poor, to hinder them from wasting their earnings in useless costs.

But the petty men who walked under his huge legs and peeped about were too many for Colossus. And, to be fair to the fools of his time, the great giant was not himself a persuasive and tactful personality. Sane, wise, and far-reaching as were the legal reforms he propounded, too many, alas, still remain for future generations to tackle.

Pull down your Hansard debates of to-day, read them if you can, and say honestly in how many pages you find political refreshment for the man in the street. The small reforms of existing laws that weigh hardly on the poor are worth at least as much of parliamentary time as many of the full dress debates about ministers' investments and tariff reform and the various trivial absurdities that excite the little minds of Tadpole and Taper, but have no relation whatever to the works and days of the power citizens of the country.

And if I were called upon to draw up a new Magna Charta for the poor--and I could draft all the reforms I want in a very small compass--I should put at the head of the parchment--"Let it be enacted that no British subject may be imprisoned for a civil debt." I do not believe that if Members of Parliament would vote on this subject as I know many of them would really wish to vote that there would be a dozen voters in the "No" lobby, and I am firmly convinced, though here I must own my parliamentary friends are in disagreement with me, that they would not injure their hold on their constituencies.

If there were any machinery in our unbusiness-like Parliament for dealing with social subjects on a non-party basis, imprisonment for debt would have been abolished long ago. The proposal is, however, a proposal to ameliorate the bottom dog, and the human bottom dog is poorly represented in the great inquest of the nation. The foreign bird whose plumes adorn the matinee hats of our dearly beloveds, the street cur who might find a sphere of utility in the scientist's laboratory, the ancient cabhorse who crosses the Channel to promote an entente cordiale by nourishing the foreigners--all these have friends, eloquent and vigorous for the lives and liberties of their especial pets; but the poor man who goes to gaol because he cannot pay the tally-man has few friends.

There is no getting away from the fact that political influences are against the abolition of imprisonment for debt. I remember many years ago--more than twenty, I fear--a learned County Court judge laughing at the eagerness with which I threw myself into a newspaper campaign against imprisonment for debt. "I, too," he said, "used to think I should live to see it abolished, and you think that merely stating unanswerable arguments against it is likely to lead to results. Well, I used to think that way about it at one time, but it is not a matter of argument at all; it is all a case of vested interests and nervous politicians. Some day another Lord Brougham will come along and sweep the thing away as he swept away the old Chancery Courts and many another legal abuse, but I shall never see it done, and unless you are another Methuselah you will never see it done." And then with a laugh of mock despair he added:

Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

I am beginning to think that my old friend spoke with the tongue of prophecy, and he was certainly right about the vested interests.

The three parties in English politics have a curious attachment to imprisonment for debt. They do not allude to it much on the platform or in the House, but it is there at the back of their minds all the same. The Conservative opposition to the proposal is the more straightforward and natural. Here is a system which enables the well-to-do to collect money from the poor, it encourages credit giving, and is thought to promote trading, it causes no inconvenience to the wealthier classes, it exists and always has existed, and it works well. Why should it be altered, especially as there is no great demand for change, and change is in itself an evil thing? Let us leave well alone. The Liberal, off the platform, is much in agreement with the proposition of abolition, his difficulties are purely practical difficulties. He finds among his best supporters, drapers, grocers, tally-men and shop-keepers, most of them Nonconformists and keen Radicals, and all of them credit givers, carrying on their businesses under the sanction, more or less direct, of imprisonment for debt. These traders are not only voters and supporters, but they are centres of political influence. I remember in the South of England, thirty years ago, being told of a grocer in a small village who was a man whose support it was necessary for the candidate to obtain. I went along to see him and he agreed to support my friend. He was worth over two hundred votes, all of them in his debt and liable to be summoned at any moment for more than they could pay.

In politics it is absurd to expect individuals to kick against the pricks, and I do not know of any politician who, deeply as he may believe in the justice and expediency of abolishing imprisonment for debt, has ever cared to take up the matter and place it prominently before his constituents in the hope of being able to convince them that it would make for the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The general belief seems to be that the influence of the shopkeeping and travelling trading classes would be used against such a Quixote, and he would receive a severe warning to stick to the ordinary hack lines of political talk and not risk his seat tilting at windmills.

The attitude of the Labour party is even more peculiar. Outwardly and individually they, of course, being more thoughtful and experienced about the wants of the poor, agree very heartily that imprisonment for debt is a class institution which should be abolished. But they certainly show no great enthusiasm in taking a hand at working for its abolition. This is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that they are business men and not theorists and have other and nearer work to do. They would, I make no doubt, support any measure of abolition, but it is essentially a legal reform and they would wait for some legal authority to initiate it.

There is too, undoubtedly, at the back of the Labour mind the idea that imprisonment for debt may be a very present help in time of trouble. In the Select Committee of 1893 Mr. William Johnson, a miner's agent, gave evidence in favour of imprisonment for debt; he asserted that nine-tenths of his men did not desire its abolition and were in favour of its continuance. Later on he pointed out that in case of sickness or in the case of non-employment, "and probably in the case of strikes," credit given under the sanction of imprisonment for debt would be useful. Unemployment and sickness are now largely dealt with by insurance, and from a public point of view the idea that strikes should be financed by the small tradesmen and, in case of their bankruptcy, ultimately by the wholesale trade, is not an attractive one.

The reformer must always expect to find selfish class interests up against him, but it seems to me that the desires of those who want to finance strikes on credit and the rights of those who at present are selling shoddy on credit at extravagant prices ought not to weigh against the general public welfare. If, as I venture to think, the arguments against the last step in the abolition of imprisonment for debt are as valid as they were on former occasions, and if, as must be admitted, no evils have followed on the partial abolitions of imprisonment already made in 1837 and 1869, then the mere fact that the public is apathetic on the subject and that members of Parliament are apprehensive of interested opposition is not of itself sufficient excuse for those who are in authority in legal matters refusing to complete the reform by abolishing imprisonment for debt for the poor as it has already been abolished for the rich.

Of course, the mere abolition of imprisonment for debt would not to my mind be a sufficient protection of the poor unless side by side of it were enacted a homestead law greatly enlarging the existing exemptions from execution of the tools and chattels of a working man. The idea is that the home furniture necessary to the lives of the human beings forming the home should be incapable of being seized for debt. Make the limit twenty pounds or whatever sum you please but clearly enact that sufficient chattels to furnish a reasonable house are exempt from execution. In America and Canada these homestead laws exist and work well. It occurs to our cousins across the pond that it is a better thing to keep a home together than to sell it up for an old song to pay official fees and costs and something on account to the foolish creditor. The returns from a poor auction of a workman's household furniture are miserable reading. The landlord by distress or the tally-man by execution may get a few shillings for himself and pay away a few more shillings to bailiffs and others, but the cost of it to the poor is cruel. Tables and chairs and perhaps a sideboard that represent months of savings and long hours of labour are in a moment of misfortune snatched away from their proud possessor and his home is a ruin.

The homestead laws in Canada, though not the same in every State, go much further than any laws we possess to prevent the breaking up of a home. In Manitoba, for instance, executions against lands are abolished, though land can be bound by a judgment by registering a certificate, and the household furniture and effects, not exceeding 500 dollars in value, and all the necessary and ordinary clothing of the debtor and his family are exempt from execution. The actual residence or house of a citizen to the extent of 1,500 dollars is also exempt. Imagine what an incentive it would be to the purchase of house property and furniture if a man were to know that his cottage to the value of three hundred pounds, and its contents to the extent of one hundred pounds, would always be protected from bailiff and sheriff. What a check, too, such legislation would be on the reckless way in which credit is given.

One exception to this rule seems to me very fair. There is no exemption of anything the purchase price of which was the subject of the judgment proceeded upon. Thus a man cannot buy a sideboard, refuse to pay the price of it, and claim exemption of the sideboard from execution by the furniture dealer who sold it, though he could claim exemption of the sideboard against a money lender who had obtained a judgment against him, and wanted to recover his debt by sweeping his home away. Here in England people are driven to shifts and evasions by means of bills of sale, goods put in the wife's name, and a number of other semi-dishonest devices to protect their homes. The sight of a home broken up and the furniture that has cost so many years of saving slaughtered at a third-rate auction for little more than the costs and fees of the bailiffs is no great incentive to a working man to spend his savings on good, home-made chattels. Cheap foreign shoddy on the hire system is the order of to-day, and as a mere matter of encouragement of the better class home trade in furniture, carpets, drapery and household goods generally, we might consider the advisability of taking a leaf out of the Statute book of Manitoba.

That debt should never be allowed to utterly destroy a family and a home seems to me such a clear and sane idea that it has always been a puzzle to me to try and understand the point of view of those who cannot see the matter in the same light. I know it is a degrading confession for anyone with even the pretence of a judicial mind to have to make but it is best to be honest about it. I rather gather I am a little obsessed, or abnormal, or feeble-minded, or senile perhaps nowadays about anything that touches home or home life.

The home to me is the great asset of the nation. I do not want to see the home superseded by State barracks or common hostels or district boarding schools. On the contrary, I think individual homes are good for the development of citizens. For this reason I would protect the home from ruin by an extravagant husband or an extravagant wife in the interests of the children, who are the next generation of citizens, and whose welfare is, therefore, a debenture of the State.

Nobody would think of distraining on a pheasant's nest, or breaking up the home of a couple of partridges, or imprisoning the birds at breeding time in separate coops and cutting down their food merely because one of the birds had run up a bill for too many mangel wurzels or the other had run into debt for some fine feathers beyond her means.

Pheasants and partridges are too valuable to be so treated. Their nests are protected from any distress or execution by poachers, and their bodies are protected from arrest by watchful gamekeepers under strict laws. I want to insure under my reformed laws that the human nest should be protected in the same way, and that judges should not only be allowed, but ordered, to take care that the home is not devastated by human misfortune or even by improvidence. We want Game Laws for the poor. In future our legislators must treat them as game birds--as indeed most of them are--and not as vermin to be devoured, they and their children, by the owls and kites of the underworld in which they live.

And the second clause of my Magna Charta would be of almost simpler dimensions than the first. It would run: "Let it be enacted that the County Courts have jurisdiction in Divorce." This would at once place rich and poor on an equality that is not yet even aimed at. I should not complicate this matter with the overdue reforms proposed by the Divorce Commission, much as I should like to see those enacted. They are matters of general interest that have waited for so many years that there is not much hardship in holding them back further, but the institution of a new tribunal of divorce is of vital and immediate importance to the poor. The Act would be a practically unopposed act of one clause. It would only touch one vested interest, the London lawyers of the Divorce Court, and it would greatly please their brethren throughout the country.

All details of costs and machinery could be left to rule committees, as is the common practice in other and more important matters that have come to the County Courts, such as Admiralty and equity jurisdiction, and a hundred other really difficult and complicated matters.

And then would follow a lot of simple but important reforms that really only need the stroke of the official pen that is never made until the man in the street rises in his wrath and knocks the official funny-bone on the official desk and wakens him up to the fact that it is officially time to do some official act.

For, of course, police court fines must be cut down and time given to pay them, and police court costs must be paid by the community, and bankruptcies must be made available to the poor, and the Treasury must cease to rob the poorest bankrupts of L13,000 a year, and the limit of such bankruptcies must be raised to L250, so that poor little business men and their creditors may get what there is, rather than it should all go in costs and fees and payments to lawyers and accountants, who must give up sparrow shooting and hunt for bigger game.

And, above all, we must remember to engross in big black text on our parchment what Joseph Chamberlain said about his Workmen's Compensation Act, that it is to be worked without lawyers, or at least, that it is to be made one of the judge's duties to see employer and workman first and endeavour to bring them together before he issues his fiat that the affair is "fit for litigation."

This little programme surprises me by its moderation. How any society of business men could palaver about it in any Palaverment for more than a week passes my comprehension. I commend my new Magna Charta to a party in want of a programme. If they carried it in the first week of their Ministry and then adjourned for seven years to see how the world went on without them, they would be the most sensible and popular Government since the days of Alfred the Great.