their persons, and some pecuniary emolumentsupon condition they surrender
up their whole estate to be divided among their creditors
The laws of England are cautious of encouraging prodigality and
extravagance by this indulgence to debtors, and therefore they allow the
benefit of the laws of bankruptcy to none but actual traders; since that
set of men are, generally speaking, the only persons liable to accidental
losses, and to an inability of paying their debt, without any fault of
their own. If persons in other situations of life run in debt without the
power of payment, they must take the consequents of their own indiscretion,
even though they meet with sudden accidents that may reduce their fortunes
for the law holds it to be an unjustifiable practice, for any person but a
trader to encumber himself with debts of any considerable value. If a
gentleman, or one in a liberal possessionat the time of contracting his
debts, has a sufficient fund to pay him, the delay of payment is a species
of dishonesty, and a temporary injustice to his creditor; and if, at such
time, he has no sufficient fund, the dishonesty and injustice is the
greater. He cannot therefore murmur, if he suffers the punishment which he
has voluntarily drawn upon himself. But in mercantile transactions the case
is far otherwiseTrade cannot be carried on without mutual credit on both
sides; the contracting of debts is therefore here not only justifiable, but
necessary. And if the accidental calamitiesas by the loss of a ship in a
tempest, the failure of brother trades, or by non-payment of persons out of
trade, a merchant or trader becomes incapable of discharging his own debts,
it is misfortune and not his fault. (19)
Een parlementaire commissie rapporteerde in 1818:
That imprisonmenteven in case of debtors, should be productive of
discomfortis a circumstance that cannot be avoided. It is, in their case,
a penalty for improvidence and sometimes for dishonesty; and if misfortune
bas a share, it may be lamented, but human prudence cannot devise a
perfectly discriminative system. (20)
Lester beschreef de nog in de jaren zestig heersende moraal als volgt:
To Victoriansfew things were as important as ^character'with its
related virtues of thrift, self-help, and individual effort. For an
individual to fail financially was to show dishonesty and thus weakness of
character. As Samuel Smiles put it in Self Help (1859)"For if a man does
not manage honestly to live within his own means, he must necessarily be
living dishonestly upon the means of somebody else." In such an atmosphere
it is not surprising that financial failure pervaded popular fiction.
Churches treated bankruptcy as a serious moral problemand some churches
disciplined members who became bankruptEvangelicals recognized, however,
that volatile economic times produced many innocentbankruptsThese
innocent bankrupts played the part of the sacrificial offering, atoning for
the sins of the commercial world, (a)
De schande voor John Dickens en in de roman Little Dorrit voor William Dorrit, is hiermede
bevestigd. Tevens is nu begrijpelijk, dat in Bleak House Dickens t.a.v. van mr.Jellyby, die bankroet ging,
kon schrijven, dat hij "honourably dismissed" werd.
Een levenslang streven als 'genteel' erkend te worden, dreigde te mislukken. John Dickens werd
a. Victorian Insolvency; Bankruptcy, Imprisonment for Debt, and Company Winding-up in Nineteenth Century
England/V. Markham Lester. ISBN 0-19-820518-X. P. 58. In de jaren 2estig gingen de termen 'bankrupt' en 'insolvent'
samenvallen.
-V-
