Added to this, an attorney of abilities had a salary to attend every inmate of that hospitable mansion, with advice according to each man's different case.
This liberal plan, though it was a little mad and eccentric, in something less than two years, which time it lasted, saved, in the aggregate, at least the sum of nineteen thou•and pounds in hard money to a set of unfortunate men and their families, besides a world of humiliation and disgrace; and, what was a still greater advantage—by a fair appeal to the humanity of the creditor, shewing him the impossibility of getting his money by sending a man to prison, conjuring him to commiserate the sufferings of his fellow creatures, and other arguments likely to disarm his anger—at least three hundred of those unfortunate men who would otherwise have gone to confinement, and who, it they did not die in it, might almost as well do so, for their credit would have been totally lost, and their families reduced to poverty, were given back to society, mildly warned not to be guilty of future

indiscretions, instead of thrown into a situation where strong necessity, in spight of the best intentions, must have inevitably plunged them into ten times worse.
Our hero had a particular pleasure in being instrumental towards healing those meum and tuum breaches. He very often accompanied the house attorney, and was peculiarly happy with the creditor in that kind of argument which shewed him that he was like an angry school boy, throwing one marble to find another, and at last losing both. In short, he saw his benevolent institution thrive every day, though it must be confessed, to keep-up its credit, orders were now and then obliged to be given, that no notorious swindlers, or other well known sharpers, might be admitted; and this was pretty well managed by enquiring whether the debtors brought there were tradesmen, or men of liberal professions, or members of the church, the army, the court, or of those other descriptions which would make it probable they were such objects as the spirit of the plan went to relieve. Yet is it not astonishing that the world received this spirited innovation on official tyranny as a most unbecoming attempt to destroy the common usuage and sanctioned progress of the law! It was called a mad scheme, and one that would finish by converting the

house into a receptacle for lunatics, where the founder would be the first person admitted.
One very curious thing that our hero came at through his researches was that many of these cases originated from the folly, and frequently something worse, of the creditors