354 MORALS OF THE DIFFERENT PROFESSIONS. [Part V.

importance, his manner of living, without any visible degradationor retrenchment ; and the other, to repeat the same system ofcredit, with the same disastrous credulity. It is not unfrequentfor the same individual to run a second time over the same courseof extravagance, folly, and ruin. If this is the manner of oursettling the affairs of an insolvent, concludes he, we may imaginewhat becomes of the foreign creditor and his claims, and cannotbe surprised if he is loud in his complaints.

Without undertaking to confirm the representations of thislearned magistrate, and most respectable writer, still it cannot bedenied, that the manner in which bankrupts have, in this country,and perhaps elsewhere, too frequently conducted themselves to-wards those who have trusted them ; and especially the authoritythey have assumed, and sometimes insolently too, over theirproperty, in exclusion of those to whom it rightfully belongs, area subject of just and great complaint, utterly inconsistent with theprinciples of honest dealing, and tending to destroy all confidenceand all security in commercial transactions. The moral dutiesimposed on a bankrupt merchant are twofold ; — they have re-spect to the approach of his bankruptcy, — and, again, to the con-dition of things when bankruptcy has actually overtaken him.

It rarely happens, that the ruin of a merchant is effected at asingle blow, by a single unlooked for misfortune. It is moreusually the result of a series of unfortunate events, or imprudentexpenditures, each bringing him nearer to his overthrow. Hehas usually many significant warnings of his fall, and cannot butsee its approach, when he dares to look steadily towards it. Butthis he carefully avoids. He shuts his eyes upon it, he strives todeceive himself, and continues to deceive others. He turns fromexpedient to expedient, from bank to bank, from friend to friend,still increasing his debts and his difficulties, until he can struggleno longer, and sinks under a burthen, doubled and trebled by hisdesperate efforts to extricate himself. If he had had the wisdom,the manliness, the honesty, to yield to the pressure, when it firstbecame too heavy for him, how many sacrifices would have beensaved, how many debts avoided, how much injury and discontentprevented. This weakness, this reluctance to surrender, whenhe knows, or ought to know, that he cannot sustain the contest,