to restrain the liberty or punish by imprisonment or otherwise those who shall have committed any criminal offence, or attempt to do so: it follows, without the possibility of evading the conclusion, that every contract, under the operation, colour, or pretence of which, personal liberty shall be invaded, or claimed to be forfeited without crime, or criminal attempt, is inconsistent with the unalienable right of personal liberty, and is consequently, unjust, unjustifiable and void; and that no act of government, intended to authorize such contract, or operating to sustain it, could change its objectionable character, is manifest, for that government can possess no right or rightful power, but such as is derived from its constituents; and no person possessing a right to alienate an unalienable right, the government cannot acquire a power which its constituents do not possess, and therefore no power to give or delegate to their political agents or representatives.

Although it may seem superfluous to array, as might be done, an immense volume of corresponding argument on the subject under consideration: yet, your committee, being strongly impressed with the importance of the truths which they advocate, and with a view to a more extended diffusion of the knowledge of them, deem it proper here to add the following further illustration of them, and of the propriety, utility, and moral obligation, of an undeviating adherence to them,

Were imprisonment for debt just and righteous, it would be equally so for any persons to enter into an agreement or contract, in which the provisions and effects of that law should be made the subjects of express stipulations. Let us follow out these positions consistently, with the view to ascertain where the doctrine of im prisonment for debt will land us,

Should one contract to purchase goods on credit, and agree that if he failed to make payment at the appointed time, that his life should be forfeited to his creditor, will it be contended, that should the debtor not pay at the time stipulated for that purpose, that the debtor's life would be forfeited? And if the creditor should take the debtor's life, and should plead the aforementioned contract, in justification of the act, would it avail him on an indictment for murder? Would he not be told, and told truly, that no person has a right to commit suicide, and that his life not being at his own disposal, he cannot by contract, delegate another to do that which he had no right to do himself? and that to take life under such cir

cumstances, amounts to the crime of murder: and were it otherwise, an agreement to fight a duel would be valid, and might be set up as a good defence, on an indictment for the murder of a person killed by those means.

Again. Should it be alleged and admitted that the debtor was a dishonest man, and had failed by means of fraud to fulfil his contract for payment, would that extenuate the offence, or justify the killing? Would the creditor not be told by the court, that he is no less a murderer, though his victim was a criminal-that his crime still is murder, though his victim was a fraudulent debtor? And should the arraigned prisoner turn to the statute book and point out a law to render such contracts valid, and to authorize and require their literal execution, would not the court tell him, that the law of self-preservation is irresistibly imperative, and of prior and paramount obligation; and therefore, the right of life is unalienable, and no human law can make it otherwise, or justify its violation, on the authority of voluntary contract?

And would the reasoning and decision of the court be materially different in case of a contract for the imprisonment of a defaulting debtor, or a contract operating to effect such a result? With a view to show that it would not, we will in this as in the preceding case, make the effects of the law of imprisonment for debt, and the practices under it, the subjects of express stipulation, and set them forth at large in the written contract, by which the creditor may insist that the debtor, in default of payment, shall be arrested, dragged from his home, his family, his friends, and incarcerated like a criminal, in a loathsome prison, and there, whether able to pay or not, shall live or die, unless he pays the debt. He shall be restrained in his freedom, even in a greater degree than a negro slave, and yet shall be obliged to labor for his subsistence, live on charity, or starve to death. His wife and helpless children shall be bereft of her husband's and their father's care and protection, and deprived of his services and his labor for their comfort and subsistence; they shall, if it be possible, provide for themselves, be maintained by their friends, or subsist on public charity. He shall live in idleness, and spend his leisure hours in bewailing his misfortunes, and his bitter cup of sorrows shall be more embittered by the agonizing reflection that his wife and children are suffering deep and accumulating distress for want of his presence, his labor and his counsel: and finally, that he may, by the combined operation

of all the causes here mentioned, be led to contract those vicious habits which idleness, misfortune and bad company seldom fail to produce in debtor's prisons.

Here your committee will ask, should a person go into court - with such a contract in his hand, duly sealed and delivered, and insist on its execution, and his right to enforce it, would not any judge who should be possessed of sufficient intelligence and humanity, to merit the honor of his official station, indignantly exclaim, "Worse than Shylock!! He would have been satisfied with a pound of human flesh; but this human cormorant would have the whole carcase at his own disposal!"-and would not a humane, moral and intelligent audience involuntarily respond in concert with the feelings and opinion of the court?

What an iniquitous contract that must be, the terms and consequences of which are so abhorrent to the human feelings! Yet as bad as it may be, and unquestionably is, it contains nothing more than what is justified by the law of imprisonment for debt, and the consequences which follow its practical operation: in concert with the spirit of which, it has been absurdly assumed as an axiom in forensic logic, that "the imprisonment of the body, is the greatest satisfaction known to the law;" a position which not only violates truth and common sense, but goes the length of arraying acts of cruelty in the robes of justice! "By its fruit the tree is known;" and that must be an unrighteous and immoral law which induces and authorizes a course of conduct, or which necessarily leads to consequences from which the natural and benevolent feelings of the human heart involuntarily revolt.

But let us hear what the court would, or ought to say to the party claiming the literal fulfilment of the last mentioned contract. Would the court not deny the plaintiff's suit, and justify such refusal, under the existing laws and legal and moral maxims which govern other civil contracts? Would they not tell him, that "it is a principle of natural and common law, as well as of moral philosophy and logical reasoning, that the lesser force necessarily must, and naturally does, give way to the greater: and that the principle holds good as it respects civil contracts." If an individual could, by contract, rightfully authorize a creditor to divest him of his personal liberty, by imprisoning him for the non-payment of debt, he could with equal propriety and legality contract to become the slave of

the creditor in the event of inability or neglect to pay his debt, and thus rid himself of all his natural, prior and paramount obligations to preserve his unalienable right to liberty, and to appropriate the proceeds of his industry to the maintenance of himself and his family. We deem it not probable that any person of mature years and sound mind, will contend that any free citizen in this community, can become a slave in virtue of his own contract: yet, however better the condition of a slave is, than that of an imprisoned debtor, there are no reasons which can be urged against such a contract, which would not equally apply against any contract, the breach of which would be followed by the loss of personal liberty. And all the reasons which can be justly opposed to the literal fulfilment of the several contracts herein before hypothetically stated, apply with equal force against the justice of the law of imprisonment for debt; which law virtually gives to commercial or business contracts, all the iniquitous effects above mentioned, as fully as if specifically detailed in the agreement between the parties.

And if further argument were required to sustain the judgment of the court against the injustice of the law of imprisonment for debt, or against the contract containing, as before mentioned, express stipulation in accordance with the usual effects of said law, would not the court, in accordance with the concurrent statements of Puffendorf and Blackstone, further and truly allege, that "the duty of parents to provide for the maintenance of their children, is a principle of natural law: an obligation laid on them not only by nature herself, but by their own proper act in bringing them into the world; for they would be in the highest manner unjust to their issue, if they gave them life, and then abandoned them to perish. By becoming parents, they have entered into a voluntary obligation to endeavor, as far as in them lies, that the life which they have bestowed shall be supported and preserved."

It is indeed justly regarded as a cruel, unnatural, inhuman and immoral act for a parent to abandon his offspring. It would be a libel even on the brute creation, to compare such a parent with them; for they never neglect to obey that common law of nature, which is imposed on all animal creation. But this law, as has been in substance before remarked, would be nugatory, and could not be obeyed, unless those on whom its obligations are imposed, have the free exercise of the powers of body and mind; the only possible means by which the law in question could be complied

with. We here arrive at the same irrefragible conclusion as before, that the rights of personal liberty, in the case before us, are as well defined, as in the case of the laws of self-preservation. Man not having the right voluntarily to divest himself of his natural obligation to maintain and protect his offspring, he cannot rightfully, directly nor indirectly, by contract or compact, with one or more persons, called creditor or government, surrender or alienate his personal liberty, one of the necessary and indispensable means which enable him to fulfil his natural and imperative obligations to maintain his family.

Besides, the rights of helpless offspring to be protected and maintained, are as obvious and as well defined as the obligation of the parent to succor and sustain them. As no person can rightfully make a contract, which, in its express stipulations or in its necessary operation, impairs the rights of persons not parties to it, without their consent: and as the surrender by the parent, of his personal liberty, by virtue of the operation of a contract which he failed by means of inability to fulfil, would divest his family of their right to the proceeds of his labor for their sustenance, he cannot, by contract, evade his obligations to maintain his offspring and protect them in their rights.

And, following out our reasoning on this subject, would not the court also tell the plaintiff, that the contract in virtue of which he claims a right to imprison his debtor, contains stipulations in palpable and direct hostility to the natural and unalienable rights of man, and his natural and moral obligations; and being thus against good morals, it is consequently void? And would it not also with equal truth and justice be said to such plaintiff or creditor, you knew of the existence of those unalienable rights and anterior and paramount obligations, and that the natural disposition to fulfil them, was, in a manner, irresistible; and because in performing the contract for the surrender of his personal liberty to which we are alluding, the debtor must violate natural law, natural and unalienable rights, parental duties and the principles of moral rectitude, the court would adjudge it void so far as its stipulations contravene those rights and obligations.

And here your committee will ask, can the law of imprisonment for debt, enacted, as has been shown, and as will further appear, in the progress of this report, without any rightful or constitutional