2 FEBRUARY 1907, Page 22

How to Avoid Payment of Debt. By a Solicitor. (Simpkin,

Marshall, and Co. is. net.)—This is a cheap edition of a book which was published some time ago, and which, as the "Solicitor" puts it, "created more excitement and less result than was expected." As to result, we are not surprised. The matter of " debt" has been the despair of legislators from the very earliest time. The farther we get away from the pitiless severity with which the debtor used ones to be treated the greater do our difficulties become. If imprisonment is abolished, the creditor will be made more helpless than ever. The only remedy will be the total abolition of credit. Yet an absolute ready-money system is impossible. Even the Co-operative Societies seem unable to maintain it.