26 May 1804

Evidence

Ch. Extraction

§ Engl. Law

In the case of a delinquent /delinquency/ - of an individual presumed or suspected of delinquency, all this rigour is laid aside. The law knows /admitts/ of no other infliction in the character of a compulsive process, the law admitts of no other infliction, than simple imprisonment. What is the consequence? that in many cases a long protracted course of suffering is produced - a long remainder[?] of life filled not infrequently with bitterness, and the object in view not compassed / / after all - : the quantity of suffering augmented, and the whole of it thrown away.

Many a dishonest debtor in whom the juryman's torture would have produced immediate compliance, carries the fruits of this dishonesty with him to prison, and there consumes them, in defiance of his injured and impoverished creditors.

In the case of bankruptcy, i.e. commercial insolvency non-responsion and false-responsion is /are/ indeed as far as concerns the concealment of effects /assets/ applicable in satisfaction of debts, made punishable and punishable with death; but even here the distant and eludible punishment is preferred to the unelludible and instant compulsory infliction; and in cases of non-commercial insolvency, and in all other cases in which evidence is supposed to be extracted

simple imprisonment and that alone is applied, and is the only [074-427/2]

infliction applicable. This infliction is indeed susceptible of prodigious variation, under the same name variable upon a prodigiously extensive scale: depending upon the localities of the prison - the accommodations afforded by the prison, and the exterior appendages /territory/ annexed to it: but the variations depend upon accident, are the result /product/ not of justice /wisdom/ but of negligence and in practice are not applied, nor indeed capable of being applied with uniformity to this purpose.