torious insolvent debtor will be harassed by new suits, and new litigations, as often as he moves out of the state boundaries.[1] His whole property may be absorbed by his creditors residing in a single state, and he may be left to the severe retributions of judicial process in every other state in the Union. Among a people, whose general and commercial intercourse must be so great, and so constantly increasing, as in the United States, this alone would be a most enormous evil, and bear with peculiar severity upon all the commercial states. Very few persons engaged in active business will be without debtors or creditors in many states in the Union. The evil is incapable of being redressed by the states. It can be adequately redressed only by the power of the Union. One of the most pressing grievances, bearing upon commercial, manufacturing, and agricultural interests at the present moment, is the total want of a general system of bankruptcy. It is well known, that the power has lain dormant, except for a short period, ever since the constitution was adopted; and the excellent system, then put into operation, was repealed, before it had any fair trial, upon grounds generally believed to be wholly beside its merits, and from causes more easily understood, than deliberately vindicated.[2]
- ↑ 2 Kent's Comm. Lect. 37, p. 323, 324; Sergeant on Const. Law, ch. 28, [ch. 30;] Mr. Justice Johnson in 12 Wheat. R. 273 to 270.
- ↑ See the Debate on the Bankrupt Bill in the House of Representatives in the winter session of 1818; Webster's Speeches, p. 510, &c.—It is matter of regret, that the learned mind of Mr. Chancellor Kent should have attached so much importance to a hasty, if not a petulant, remark of Lord Eldon on this subject. There is no commercial state in Europe, which has not, for a long period, possessed a system of bankrupt or insolvent laws. England has had one for more than three centuries. And at no time have the parliament or people shown any intention to abandon the system. On the contrary, by recent acts of parlia-
