Humble Proposal For the Relief of DEBTORS, And speedy Payment of their CREDITORS.  
London Printed in the Year 1676.   

An humble PROPOSAL for the relief of DEBTORS, and speedy payment of their CREDITORS.  
HOw considerable a part of the Gentry of this Kingdom groans under the Burden of Encumbrance, without any Prospect of clearing or not increasing their Debts, is too manifest: Yet it may not be improper briefly to observe, how this evil affects all Parties, as well Creditors as Debtors, The Creditor upon a good Mortgage seems finally secure; But in the mean time, without actual Entry, suffers both in the want of his present Income, and long forbearance of his principal Sum, minority of times intervening: Having entered and being in Possession, he bocomes the Borrowers Servant to manage his Estate upon uneasy terms liable to Account: Improve he cannot prudently, nor scarce duly repair; and whilst the Property is thus unsettled, the Estate is so far from Improvement, (how capable soever) that frequeutly it sinks in Value, if not to the Lender's damage, (which sometines happens) yet to the great hurt of the Owner and Commonwealth. Seldom he commands his Debt without mutual trouble and vexation, (by reason of the many difficulties and obstructions in the presant sale of Land) which is too apt to beget ill Neighbourhood and unkindness betwixt Friends. Yet this is the Lendors best condition, for Creditors upon Personal Security are more dangerously obnoxious to the unhandsome shifts and practices of too many Borrowers. With Debtors it is much worse, especially if their Debts overtop their Credit: Like Consumptive Persons, they converse with nothing but daily and sensible decay, condemned to perpetual Bondage, from which certainly many of them would ransom themselves by selling almost at any Rate, but are continually frustrated and Tantalized: Either those that would Purchase of them cannot command their Sums, (the case of too many fair Creditors) or the Land not being for the present let, or not let to satisfaction; no particular thereof will be accepted without ruinous abatements, or some unreasonable Covenants and Conditions are imposed by severe Purchasers, or some needless seruples raised by difficult Counsel, or some mischievous tricks and delays contrived by extorting Interlopers: Upon these and the like accounts it happens, that fair Estates are swallowed up, Just Debts unsatisfyed, Civil Creditors driven to rigorous and extreme courses, Well-meaning Debtors insolvent, Sureties exposed by their principals, Due Payment (the life-blood of Commerce) obstructed, the Land itself neglected and disparaged, the Bad enriched by the spoils of Good men.  
So spreading and contagious is the Nature of Debt, especially where Land is cheap, Markets falling, and the payment of Rents generally casual; that we cannot with Reason hope, the vast Bulk of our presant Encumbrance will ever clear itself, or be cleared by any gradual means; Rather we have cause to fear the further progress of it, not visibly to be prevented without some integral Expedient: Wherefore it is humbly proposed; That all Debtors (or at least those that have borrowed upon real Security) may be allowed to tender their Creditors Payment in Lands of equal value, at eighteen or twenty years' Purchase, prized in the particular with such moderate abatement of former Rents, where Farms are unletten, as shall be judged reasonable, with reference to the fall of Lands; which payment Creditors refusing, shall from thenceforth, claim no Vse-money: And that Creditors, after legal demand and lapse of convenient time, may have such payments decreed of Course; The Methods and Circumstances of Proceeding being left to the Wisdom of Authority.  
Seldom is any Expedeient so adjusted, as to comply with all concernments; should our Laws be tried by that Touchstone, there would not want Objectors against the best of them; It is therefore held sufficient, if they be profitable to the Majority, oppressive to none, and if upon the whole matter the good from them expected outvie the evil surmised, which herein will easily appear by comparing the Motives with the Objections.  
For Motives, it is manifest, that many honest Borrowers will thereby be speedily disenthralled, whose condition otherwise seems almost desperate; Creditors, who now complain of fatal disappointment, will command their just Debts: The Land (which is our only real and considerable fund) will not only recover, but greatly advance its price, when there shall be few Sellers upon Extremity, or Purchasers upon Advantage to beat down its value; Credit will become generally sound, and the high rate of Interest (supported by Encumbrance) may then indeed sink of itself without a Law; much of our Stock (now hurtfully managed at Use) will be naturally turned into Trade and Improvement; And thousands of Brokers and other Factours of Extortion may hereafter employ their approved Abilities to the Service and Benefit of their Country.  
The principal Objections are these; 1. It supposes an Arbitrary Proceeding without Precedent, and Powers of difficult Execution. 2. What if the Title should prove intricate? 3. The Land may be remote or inconvenient to the Lender. 4. Lender's may in some Cases pay more than the present Value. 5. Borrowers will complain of being abridged in their Equity.  
To the first it is answered; That whatsoever is enacted by common consent in Parliament, should not be counted Arbitrary, though it were without Precedent; But are there not Precedents for deciding of important Causes in a summary way? How many such Commissions have we lately known? The late rigorous Act for the Rebuilding of London is instar omnium to this purpose: Neither indeed can such Authorities be here presumed to miscarry, their Rules being so easily ascertained.  
To the second, The title in Mortgages is presumed already to have been scanned, and may in many other Cases easily be cleared; If the fault be on the Borrowers part, the Lender may then fairly refuse, but Valeat quantum valere potest. However if the former Security be continued to make the Sale, the Lender cannot be prejudiced.  
To the third and fourth, Why should the Creditor decline the purchase of that Land for its remoteness, which he accepted in Mortgage, or which was at least the fund of that Credit which he gave the Borrower, the Profits whereof should therefore competently answer his Interest without such overplus of Security as is now adays demanded? Can he assign any real difference betwixt Lending and Purchasing, save the avoiding of just Duties? Let him then content himself with the Advantages he hath so long enjoyed, and consider the Borrowers Hordships, who having all this while paid double Taxes, (viz.) both his own and his Creditors too, is thereby not only plunged into Debt, but again more grievously punished in the abortive Sale of his Inheritance: Whereas the Creditor hath indeed no cause to distrust his Bargain, the value whereof will be near doubled by the general clearing of Encumbrance, and equality of future Burdens.  
To the fist, No Borrower can justly complain of that Rigour, which after default by him incurred, doth not impair, but much improve his present Condition.  
That this is not a mere Project, nor altogether New, what higher Evidence can be offered, than that memorable Edict provided by the Wisdom of Julius Caesar, (in times not unparallel to ours for Encumbrance of Estates) related by Suetonius, and thus Englished in the Translation of that famous Historian? As touching Money lent out, when he had quite put down the expectation of Cancelling Debts, (a thing that was often moved) He decreed at length, that all Debtors should satisfy their Creditors in this manner; namely, by an Estimate made of their Possessions, according to the worth and value as they Purchased them before the Civil War, deducting out the Principal whatsoever had been paid, or set down in the Obligation for the Use. By which Condition the fourth part well near of the Money credited forth was lost.  
It was the known Policy of the Roman State, after Civil Wars, impartially to quit and cancel all manner of Debts; Hard measure one would think, for innocent Persons, as it were, to forfeit not the Use only but the Principal; yet private Interest, it seems, must stoop to buoy up the Public: They considered, That the Riches of a Country, nothing is so Essential as the value of Land, to the value of Land nothing so destructive as great Encumbrance; that by Civil War, not only former Debts were constantly augmented, but new ones vastly multiplied; That by reason of public distractions, the Rents of Land became generally desperate, and even the Land itself for the present much embased in its Price: Creditors, in the mean time, scaping the whole brunt, and thereby every where supplanting Freeholders'. They therefore aptly applied the quitting of Use-money to balance the loss of Rents: The discharge of Principal Debts to repair the decay of Lands and Landlords. Thus were the common sufferings fairly distributed, and the seeds of future evils at once extirpated; there being otherwise such a Malignity in the Nature of Civil War, that it commonly leaves behind it a dangerous Poison and ferment. Upon such former Practice the expectation of Cancelling Debts at that time seems to have been grounded.  
From this excellent Edict, it is for our purpose remarkable, 1. That Lands were then strictly prised to the Creditor according to their former values, without any allowance for the fall of Rents. 2. That it was judged a modest relief to Debtors, and rather in favour of Creditors, for them to quit only all their Use-money incurred during the Civil War. 3. That the Law here cited being a Law of public benefit and private Justice, was yet ordained by a Heathen Conqueror, (not to say Usurper) and therefore cannot but better become a lawful Christian Government? 4. That this Law seems mainly to have gratified the Nobility, who yet were most of them sworn Enemies to Caesar: Whereas such a Law in our time, would redress and oblige, not barely his Majesty's Loyal Subjects, but the most approved assertors of the Cause, thereby chief encumbered in their Estates.   
FINIS.