The Law and the Poor Part 7

The bankrupt has a curious affection for jewellery. He buys large quant.i.ties of this commodity, and sells it again at a loss to stave off the evil day and add to his deficiency. I read in the Board of Trade reports of a failure due to gambling and extravagance, in which the debtor purchased jewellery for 40,000 and sold it the same day for 10,000. If he had been a poor man I think maybe the police would have tried to find a law to give him a rest cure for a few months in one of His Majesty's gaols, but he failed for over 70,000, and the probable value of his a.s.sets was 175.

Perhaps he was a bit of an aristocrat. Anyhow the police left him alone. I cannot even tell you his name, for the kind Inspector-General in Bankruptcy, fearful of causing pain to the sorrowing, never tells you the names and addresses of the people whose history he writes. He speaks of him as "No. 1512 of 1911." The poor fellow had no occupation, his cruel father only allowed him a miserable thousand a year, so what could No.

1512 do but run into debt? The wonder is that he failed for so little as 70,000.

No. 614 of 1907 was not much of a record, but he will do as another example. He, too, had no occupation except qualifying for a bankrupt and ultimately failed for 21,292 with a.s.sets _nil_. He started his wild career at the age of nineteen with expectations of a fortune when he got to the age of twenty-five. With that charming simplicity and cunning, characteristic of the whelps of the vulgar rich, he proceeded to moneylenders, and at the date of the receiving order had created charges exceeding 430,000 on his reversion of such complexity that every mortgagee disputed the right of every prior enc.u.mbrancer. This would not matter so much, as all these victims were doubtless moneylenders and a lot of the money would go to estimable lawyers to smooth out the wrinkled parchment muddle, but then at the back of all those were the unsecured creditors, poor tradesmen and others. They were to get nothing.

No. 1103 of 1908 was an even smaller fellow. This debtor was educated at Oxford and, on leaving the university in 1901, he was in debt to the extent of 4,500. I have a pa.s.sion for statistics, and I should like to see a balance sheet showing on one side the expenses of the four thousand Oxford undergraduates during three years of residence, and on the other side the earnings of the same four thousand undergraduates for a similar period in, say, fifteen or twenty years afterwards. I fear it would not be much of an advertis.e.m.e.nt for Oxford. No. 1103's father paid up his creditors to the extent at least of fifteen shillings in the pound, and gave him a fresh start. He was in trouble again in 1906, through betting and extravagance, and failed for 20,392--a.s.sets 1,103.

The French have an excellent system of declaring these youngsters to be prodigals and putting them under a committee as we do lunatics with property, and no doubt in money matters they are akin to the insane, and are really to be pitied and cared for. But to the poor it must be strange to see debt and the disaster of debt causing such different results in law to different cla.s.ses of people, and it must be hard for them to understand why they, too, are not fit subjects for the blessings of bankruptcy rather than gaol.

And what am I to say to my friend Joseph the signalman, at twenty-nine shillings a week, when he shows me some of these spicy stories of the Inspector-General's report cut out of the local paper.

"What has it all got to do with you, Joseph?"

"Well," he says, "I've been thinking why should not I do a bit of a failure like No. 1512 of 1911? I can buy a gramophone and a watch, and a few lucky wedding rings and a family Bible, and a plush drawing-room suite on the instalment system, and I can borrow a pound or two on a promissory note. Of course betting and beer cannot be done on the nod in my cla.s.s of life, but one can owe a bit of rent, and altogether I see my way to do a failure up to, say, thirty pounds. Why shouldn't I go bankrupt?"

"Well, the answer is very simple," I have to tell him. "The rules of the game are made by the rich for the rich, and not for you, Joseph, at all.

Oh, dear, no! In the first place you must have a debt of fifty pounds."

"Well," replies Joseph, "I think I could bring it as high as that if I tried."

"And next you must have a creditor to make you bankrupt, and unless he thinks there is some stuffing in you or wool on your back a creditor is not going to waste his time and money making the likes of you bankrupt."

"But," says my hopeful friend Joseph, "what is the meaning of a chap filing his own pet.i.tion? I've often read of that. Why shouldn't I file my pet.i.tion?"

"My dear, simple fellow, you surely do not think the clever ones of the earth who look after your interests have not thought all that out? You take your pet.i.tion to the Bankruptcy Court and see what happens. You will find the usual janitor at the door with his open palm. Of course you are expected to pay a fee--you have learned enough about English Courts to know that you do not get 'owt for nowt' in any of them. But in the Bankruptcy Court, my young friend, they foresaw you coming along and they have put the figure too high for you. Ten pounds, money down! That's the price. If you want to set all the pretty little figures working, the official receiver smiling, the registrar writing it all down, and the judge nodding on the bench, and the Board of Trade publishing statistics about you--ten pounds into the slot, my young friend, and the figures will work.

"But you have not got ten pounds, Joseph, and you could not raise the sum if you tried, so you will have to go back to work and pay twenty shillings in the pound somehow. And don't go and sell your gramophone and drawing-room suite, for they are on the hire system, and that would put you in the dock, where I hope you may never be. No. 1512 bought his 40,000 worth of jewels out and out, or said he did, and it was a Paris jeweller, anyhow, and I believe he was one of the 'nuts' and not your cla.s.s at all, Joseph, but you may take it from me that you must not expect to be treated as he was. Have I said enough, my dear friend? Are you quite satisfied? Bankruptcy, I can a.s.sure you, is not for Joseph. Oh, dear, no!"

It is only fair to the law and to the memory of Mr. Chamberlain, who made the law, to remember that when he introduced the Bankruptcy Act of 1883 he invented a system of small bankruptcies called administration orders, whereby poor folk whose debts do not amount to fifty pounds may make a composition with their creditors. Let me set down in his own words exactly what he intended and tried to do. I quote from his speech on the second reading of the Bill:

"What he now desired to call attention to was the clause which followed and which dealt with the case of debtors who owed less than fifty pounds.

That was the cla.s.s of debtors who filled our County Courts with plaints and added very considerably to the number of the occupants of our gaols.

It had always been felt to be a great hardship that while a large debtor could with ease relieve himself of all his liabilities he or his trustees might be prosecuting a poor man for thirty or forty shillings, and the latter might be sent to prison without having any means provided for him to make a composition with his creditors, and when, after satisfying the debt, he came out of gaol he was still liable in full to all his other creditors."

"But the more important provision which he had made for dealing with this subject was that under which a County Court judge might in future make an order for the payment by a debtor who owed less than fifty pounds by instalments or otherwise of all or any part of his debts. A debtor who was brought up on a judgment summons or a County Court plaint might state that he was indebted to other persons, might give in a schedule of his debts and propose an arrangement for discharging them, and, if the Court thought it reasonable, it might at once confirm it, so that a small debtor would thus be in exactly the same position as a large debtor who had succeeded in making a composition with his creditors or in arranging for a scheme of liquidation. Although he had not abolished in all cases imprisonment for debt, yet, if these provisions became law, it could no longer be said that any inequality existed as between rich and poor. The resort to imprisonment to secure payment would be much easier, and a large discretion would be vested on the judges to arrange for the relief to the small debtor by a reasonable composition."

I have set this out at length because it is enormously encouraging to know that thirty years ago Mr. Chamberlain's ideal was to destroy the County Court imprisonment for debt and to give the working man who fell into debt a bankruptcy system similar to that of the rich.

Why did it fail?

Well, it has not been wholly a failure, but it certainly has not fulfilled all its author's generous hopes. In the first place the fifty-pound limit is too small, another reason of its non-success is that it is a voluntary system of some complication in compet.i.tion with the simple, brutal method of the judgment summons and imprisonment for debt, but probably its unpopularity is chiefly due to the fact that the Treasury has always deliberately crabbed it by imposing harsh and unreasonable fees.

No system of this kind will be successful without compulsion and some clerk of the Court in the position of an official receiver to advise the poor how to go about the matter and to see that the order made is carried out. Such a system is in vogue in some Courts and has proved a success in mitigating imprisonment for debt and holding out a helping hand to those who were drifting into insolvency. But the system as it stands depends too much on the initiative of the County Court judge or the registrar. Thus we find on a working-cla.s.s circuit like Oldham, Rochdale, etc., there will be over six hundred orders made, whereas in Whitechapel only two orders are made in the same year. Systems favourable to the working cla.s.ses flourish more vigorously in the North than in the South.

You must not suppose the working man is allowed to cast off his debts in the wholesale way in which the thorough-bred, blue-blooded bankrupt does.

Not a bit of it. The order made against him is that he shall pay his debts to the extent of so many shillings in the pound at so many shillings a month. If he does not carry out the order there is prison for him for every instalment he fails to pay if the judge so orders, or at the best his order is rescinded and all his creditors are down on him again as before.

But the main drawback to the business is the extortionate fees charged by the Treasury. Here is a poor devil with twenty-five shillings and a wife and family and, let us say, thirty pounds of debt, and the judge gives him an administration order to pay ten shillings in the pound at five shillings a month. The Treasury are at once down on him. Their fees are always calculated, not on the dividend paid, but on the total amount of the debts, and they insist in every case on two shillings in the pound.

Thus, in the case of the man with thirty pounds of debt, the Treasury want three pounds money down before the creditors get anything. In 1911 the Treasury took no less than 13,000 in these fees.

In this matter we cannot acquit the law of the offence of grinding the poor. Imagine a wealthy country like this squeezing the insolvent poor out of their weekly pittances instead of helping them to pay their debts. I call it a wicked policy for the State to throw impediments in the way of a working-cla.s.s man who is struggling out of the back-waters of debt into the fairway of solvency.

Do not let us shut our eyes to what it means, for the Treasury is only our servant and ought to be doing our will, and the responsibility is yours and mine. For we know that every penny of that 13,000 comes out of the mouths of hungry women and children or, at the best, robs them of so many boots and so much clothing.

What fees do the Treasury receive from No. 1512 of 1911 and his like? Two shillings in the pound on the rich man's 70,000 of debt might enable the Chancellor to treat the poor more leniently. But the rich man pays his entrance fee of ten pounds and is a life member of the Bankruptcy Club.

The Treasury never thinks of touching him for a subscription of two shillings in the pound on the amount of his debts. Some day there will come along a Chancellor of the Exchequer who will be a Good Samaritan, and the Treasury will cease to strip the poor debtor of his raiment to the tune of 13,000 a year.

Of course it is very easy to blame a public department and throw ugly words at the lords thereof. One gets into a bad habit of blaming those in high places for the inequalities of things. I wonder if I were Chancellor whether I should get rid of that shameful tax on the poorest of the poor.

Perhaps not. After all, the Good Samaritan was speculating with his own oil and investing his own twopence. The oil and the twopence of the Exchequer belong to the public and must be dealt with according to the rules of statecraft.

And there may be some grave national danger beyond my humble ken that makes it necessary for England to dirty her hands with that 13,000.

CHAPTER VII

DIVORCE

"We have thought to tie the nuptial knot of our marriages more fast and firm by having taken away all means of dissolving it; but the knot of the will and affection is so much the more slackened and made loose, by how much that of constraint is drawn closer; and on the contrary, that which kept the marriages at Rome so long in honour and inviolate, was the liberty every one who so desired had to break them; they kept their wives the better because they might part with them if they would; and in the full liberty of divorce, five hundred years and more pa.s.sed away before anyone made use on't."

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE: "Essays."

Translated by Charles Cotton. Book II., Chap. XV.

Nearly four hundred years ago Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, was burned at the stake over against Balliol College, Oxford. You remember how a few days before, in a moment of weakness, he had signed a recantation, and how when the fire was kindled and the flames licked up the f.a.ggots they revived the spirit of the martyr within him, and he thrust his right hand into the flames, crying out: "This was the hand that wrote it; therefore it shall first suffer punishment." But if that hand had offended in matters spiritual, in practical matters it had done good work for the State.

Cranmer's "Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum" contains some of the best sense about divorce law reform that I have ever read. Its proposals are moderate, sensible and in harmony with the religious ideas of his day, which seem to have been broader and more rational than those of to-day.

Had Edward VI. lived a little longer Cranmer's treatise would have been enacted as the statute law of the country. It is pitiful to think of the four hundred years of misery and injustice under which the citizens of this country have suffered in matters relating to divorce owing to a change of Government in 1553. The Scots did better out of the Reformation and have had a more or less satisfactory divorce law in working order since that date.

Shortly, the propositions that Cranmer proposed were these, and they will be found, I think, to run parallel with the views of the common-sense citizen of to-day. He laid down the command that no husband or wife may abandon the other of his or her own free will and, in order that this might be a practical ideal, he set down the causes for which the Courts were to grant relief. Divorce was allowed for adultery, unless both parties were guilty; desertion; the unduly protracted absence of the husband; or the deadly hostility of the parties. Prolonged ill-treatment of the wife gave her a right to divorce, but even here, as long as there was any hope of improvement, the duty of the ecclesiastical judge was to reason with the husband and make him give bail for good behaviour. Only in the last resort must "she on her part be helped by the remedy of divorce."

Great stress is laid throughout the treatise on the desirability of reconciliation. "Since in matrimony there is the closest possible union and the highest degree of love that can be imagined, we earnestly desire that the innocent party should forgive the guilty and take him back again should there seem to be any reasonable hope of a better way of life."

Practical effect was to be given to this principle by the Court before proceeding to divorce.

Cranmer was entirely at one with the more advanced thought of to-day in his detestation of "separation orders." Separation without divorce was, he realised, an overture to immorality.

"It was formerly customary," he writes, "in the case of certain crimes to deprive married people of the right of a.s.sociation at _bed and board_ though in all other respects their marriage tie remained intact; and since this practice is contrary to Holy Scripture, involves the greatest confusion, and has introduced an acc.u.mulation of evils into matrimony, it is our will that the whole thing be by our authority abolished." What he would have said about our wholesale police court method of separating married people without giving them any rights to form new ties one does not like to imagine. One cannot turn from the short and pithy "Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum" of the sixteenth century to the colossal unwieldy Blue Books of the twentieth century with any sense of satisfaction.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to be got out of the latter is a study in contrasts between the body, flavour, and bouquet of archbishops of different vintages.

Thomas Cranmer's services to the State being no longer available after the Balliol fire, the choice of his Majesty Edward VII., when he issued his Royal Warrant in 1909 for the Divorce Commission, fell on "The Most Reverend Father in G.o.d Our right trusty and entirely beloved Counsellor Cosmo Gordon, Archbishop of York, Primate of England and Metropolitan."

One would have hoped that after four hundred years further consideration of Cranmer's views on divorce--the latter-day representative of Cranmer's Church would have been able to give King Edward VII. at least as good counsel as his predecessor gave to Edward VI. No doubt the Minority Report that he ultimately wrote fairly represents the narrower views of modern ecclesiastics, but it is a sad thing to see the leader of a great Church absolutely out of touch with the practical reforms that those who know the lives of the poor admit to be necessary. I should regret if, in a moment of spiritual insight, it should be made clear to our good archbishop that in signing the Minority Report his right hand had been guilty of offence, or that he should think fit to discipline himself after Cranmer's example; but if he had thrust his Minority Report into the fire, Church and State might have sung a joyful psalm of conflagration and congratulation. Alas!

Edward VI. pa.s.sed away without reform, and our brave King Edward VII.

changed his world whilst the Commissioners were still commissioning, and maybe it will be Edward VIII.'s turn some four hundred years hence to sign the new divorce law. Let nothing be done in a hurry.