Excerpt from A Plea for Poor Labouring Men: Shewing That by the County Court Practice They Are Led Into Debt, and Compelled to Pay Debts by a Process of Extortion and Oppression Most Prolonged and Harmful, and Also Unjust Because Such Process Is Used Against Poor Men Only

Bankruptcy and composition are not the remedies that can be applied to the indebtedness of a poor man. The beginning of indebtedness should be made impossible, or at the least rendered less easy for him, for he cannot afford any after or later remedies. The cause and the beginning of indebtedness is the credit given by the shopkeepers, and the life of the credit system is the payment by instalments out of future earnings enforced by the County Court. If the law was that the value of the present goods of the poor man was the extent of the remedy of his creditors, and the only available asset for payment of his debts, the shopkeeper would not trust him near so much and the debtor, if he could not defer the day of payment by the system of instalments, but found his goods forthwith seized for the Whole amount of his debt, would not dare to ask for or take the shopkeeper's goods, unless he paid for them in ready money. Both would be in their several interests intent on one object, and that would be the diminution and discontinuance of debt, credit, and large accounts, and the volume of indebtedness by poor men would be infinitely less.

The only judgment for debt allowed to be recorded, should be that the debt be immediately, or within one month, paid in one sum. Neither the creditor, the debtor, nor the Court should have power to obtain, give, or suffer a judgment for payment by instalments, or for deferred payment; nor should the Court be allowed to receive any part or instalment of the debt, but only the whole at one single payment. The poor man would thus be brought to regard a County Court debt not as an evil to be always with him, but as an impost or assessment, like a fine by the magistrates, which he must discharge at once.

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