The Yankee did not, however, as I am told, understand this practical method of commercial swindling, and he would have inevitably come to grief if he had been an Englishman. The reader may as well bear that little fact in mind. A great man once observed that, although many persons resolved to live by their wits, the vast majority of those who tried the experiment got half starved by a scarcity of the material for that sort of existence.
The penal clauses of the New Bankruptcy Act are also to be kept in view as things to avoid, for I see by the Old-Bailey intelligence they are being enforced with terrible severity. If caught and discovered offending against any of the primary canons of mercantile jurisprudence, the weight of punishment is heavy. The reader must also not forget that, although he gives the criminal law and its officers no hold over him, he may encounter cantankerous or savage creditors, who, not satisfied with the loss they may have already incurred through him, will throw away more good money, not after bad cash, but in order to punish what they conceive a bad man. They may hunt him down to disgrace and beggary, hold him up to scorn and ignominy--in violation of the pure Christian theory which bids us "live and let live"--never ceasing until he has no certain and regular mode of existence left except begging-letter writing, holding horses at the West End of the metropolis, hawking ballads, vending penny newspapers, retailing vegetables or fruit or stationery, or a life of idleness in a union workhouse.
But I am moralising, preaching, or sermonising, instead of telling my story.
Well. Mr. Abraham Driver had run his career in ten months. During this time it was believed that he had, however, to use a vulgar term, "made a purse," or "feathered his nest." He had realised considerable sums by hypothecating and selling goods, getting advances on bills of lading, &c. Where the money had gone to, his creditors were anxious to know. They believed he could pay 20_s._ in the pound. As a matter of fact, he didn't pay 1_s._ in the pound.
Abraham Driver, merchant, dealer, and chapman, as he was described in legal processes, was adjudicated a bankrupt. He didn't surrender. Perhaps, if his creditors had had an adequate idea of the dignity of American citizenship, or the sanctity of the stars and stripes, or the potency of the meanest recognised Yankee diplomat, they would never have offered such an affront as they did through Mr. Driver to his bumptious nation.