PRIVATE

1 June 1807

Letter V

III. Proper Remedies

II. Insolvent knave

Immediately before this put the [...?...?]

Very different, and much greater is the profit issuing out of delay, and by factitious delay, offered by Judge and C o to the insolvent knave, to enlist and engage him in their service: in the quality of malâ fide Defendant in the first instance, and thenceforward in the character of malâ fide Appellant, through as many stages of judicature as can have been provided for his reception: for his reception, together with that of his unwilling and extenuated adversary, where hard fate binds him to the pursuit.

To the insolvent knave, in or out of trade - to an individual who conscious of his inability to liberate himself from that state, were he to pay the whole of his debts due from him, considers it therefore as being his interest not to discharge any part of it, the profit by the delay is not confined to interest, but is co-extensive over the whole extent of the principal. According to his means of securing to himself the future use of it on the one hand, and the strength of the appetites by which he is urged to make a present expenditure of it on the other, he employs in purloining or expending the property of the adversary, whatsoever time he is enabled to command: in purloining it, by secreting it, or exporting it out of the reach of justice, or exporting himself along with it: in expending it, by consuming or giving away the substance or the value of it.