Bailing

“ The bail have this to consider, that they remind them of their promise, and warn them with all earnestness to be careful and keep themselves from punishment. This is the bridle and bit to be put in the mouth, for such bad habits, but a change of the heart must come from a higher hand, and must be sought with earnest supplication from Him who proves the heart and loins. ”

“ One of the diggers near, espying my bespattered comrade in distress, called out, ‘Hullo mate, what’s the row?’ ‘Got license,’ grumbles out the Red Hill digger. ‘Can’t you get bail,’ sings out the charitable minded questioner. ‘Not I,’ returns the other, ‘or I shouldn’t be without a license.’ No more ado, but into his tent walks he of the charitable mind, and out he shortly comes and walking straight up to my fellow captive, thrusts into his brawny hand five £1 notes, saying, ‘There's the bail money,’ and off he walked. ‘Know you that man?’ said I to my astonished mate in misfortune. ”

“ In this miserable banishment I passed six years, embittered by the most dreadful account of my family, every member of it, even in the remotest degree, having transgressed the laws of his country, and was then undergoing for his offences the punishment awarded to him. Could hope under any form have presented herself to me, I felt that I might yet be a reclaimed man, but I could not catch the most distant glimpse of her. ”

“ But perhaps a watch on deck in the sharp sea air put a man on his mettle again; a battle must have been a capital relief; and prize-money, bloodily earned and grossly squandered, opened the doors of the prison for a twinkling. ”

“ Since I wrote my last, I have had a severe moral conflict, in which I believe the right conquered, and has completely gained the ascendency. The matter was this: A man with whom I have become acquainted since my imprisonment offered to bail me out and let me stay away from my trial, and pay the bail-bonds for me, and was very anxious to do it. ”

“ Friends desert us, bailiffs tease us— (To such foes we give leg-bail) . But a stout heart still maintaining, Quells the ills we all must meet, And a spirit fear disdaining Lays our troubles at our feet. So we'll ne'er surrender tamely To the ills that throng us fast. ”

“ I was in debt to the bank in the sum of eight thousand dollars. If my investment should go wrong I could not hope to make good the loss. I should be obliged to flee from my wife and my home, and end my days in exile, if I should be so fortunate as to escape without detection. A cold sweat stood on my forehead as I thought of the possibility of discovery, of being arrested even before I supposed any one suspected me, and of being condemned to the State Prison for ten years or more. ”

“ A man gets arrested, and because he's taken from his wife and family, and locked up, you must go and trouble your head with it! And you must be mixing yourself up with nasty sheriff's officers—pah! I'm sure you're not fit to enter a decent house—and go running from lawyer to lawyer to get bail, and settle the business, as you call it! A pretty settlement you'll make of it—mark my words! Yes-and to mend the matter, to finish it quite, you must be one of the bail! That any man who isn't a born fool should do such a thing for another! Do you think anybody would do as much for you? ”

“ Bails′man, one who gives bail for another.—To accept, admit to, allow bail, are all said of the magistrate; the prisoner offers, surrenders to his bail; the one who provides it goes, gives, or stands bail.—To give leg bail, to be beholden to one's legs for escape. ”

“ Staggering under a load of debt and labour, tracked by bailiffs and reproachful creditors, running from a hundred poor dependants, whose appealing looks were perhaps the hardest of all pains for him to bear, devising fevered plans for the morrow, new histories, new comedies, all sorts of new literary schemes, flying from all these into seclusion, and out of seclusion into pleasure—at last, at five and forty, death seized him and closed his career. ”

“ The magistrate bails (but admits to bail is commoner) a man when he liberates him from arrest or imprisonment upon bond given with sureties. The surety bails a person when he procures his release from arrest by giving bond for his appearance.
Blackstone.
(b) To deliver, as goods in trust, for some special object or purpose, upon a contract, expressed or implied, that the trust shall be faithfully executed on the part of the bailee, or person intrusted; as, to bail cloth to a tailor to be made into a garment; to bail goods to a carrier. ”

“ Four days afterwards you admit a young man at your front door. He has come to enforce the warrant. Your creditors have, that morning, instructed the high bailiff to take his prisoner at once--they decline to concede another hour. You and your wife put a few things in a bag--your wife trying her best not to let you think that she will cry her eyes out directly you are gone. She wishes you to take four and threepence in your pocket. Argument, at such a moment, would mean hysterics--and a scene. Her breath comes in great sobs as she kisses you. ”

“ The bailiff, who always lives upon the property, seeing their condition, and knowing that they are not able to meet the coming gale, reports accordingly to the agent, who, now cognizant that there is only one look-up for the rent, seizes the poor man's corn and cattle, leaving himself and his family within cold walls, and at an extinguished hearth. ”

“ The essence of bail is that the prisoner should enter into an obligation, together with one or more others of pecuniary responsibility as his sureties, to appear whenever he may be called for in the course of the pending proceeding, on pain of forfeiting a certain sum of money. ”

“ There were some broken men among these debtors who had been in jail so long, and were so miserable and destitute of friends, so dead to the world, and utterly forgotten and uncared for, that they implored their jailers not to set them free, and to send them, if need were, to some other place of custody. ”

“ Yet I am already planning my escape, and that is why I insist that you withdraw any promise you have made. Otherwise—"
"Otherwise?"
"Instead of escaping by water, as I had intended, to Ostend, I must go to the prison and escape from there. It will be more difficult. The water route is best." ”

“ All persons shall be bailable, unless for capital offences, where the proof shall be evident or the presumption great. All fines shall be moderate, and no cruel or unusual punishments shall be inflicted. ”

“ The statutes as to bail upon arrest and before trial provide that 'bail may be admitted' upon all arrests in capital cases, and 'shall be admitted' upon all arrests in other criminal cases; and may be taken in capital cases by this court, or by a justice thereof, or by a circuit court, a circuit judge or a district judge, and in other criminal cases by any justice or judge of the United States or other magistrate named. ”

“ He parts with his money with regret; and, as he had no concern whatever with my having given this person shelter for a night, I wish to Heaven, if I escape a capital punishment, that the penalty may be of a kind I could bear in my own person. ”

“ Such trials, such sufferings, and all so nobly borne! Then such escapes, such disguises, such subterfuges, and all so cleverly planned and carried out! Been in prison—got out of it, of course! Been thrown into a canal—swam ashore! Stole a horse—sold him for a large sum of money! ”

“ This is no fiction. Not a week passes over our heads but, in every one of our prisons for debt, some of these men must inevitably expire in the slow agonies of want, if they were not relieved by their fellow prisoners. ”

“ Surely a rasping question to put to a man whose pulse is thumping toward the hundreds, whose purse is empty, plans broken up, credit gone, debts crowding him at every point, pains racking him, and the grimy Fleet Prison close by, throwing its shadow straight across his path. ”

“ And again we have been told—how far it is true we care not to inquire—that one man who professed great friendship for him, and became his bail on the last arrest, two days before his trial, on the following day withdrew his bail, and delivered the unfortunate man up to his adversaries ”

“ It is exciting to know that within the next few moments your last roubles may dribble away, and you yourself may step down into the street a beggar, with nothing but suicide or highway robbery before you. It is also good to know that your neighbour or partner has, with reference to his last rouble, exactly the same ticklish and cruelly poignant sensation as you yourself have had not so very long before him. To see red and pale excited faces, tremulous with the terror of being beaten and with the greed of gain, to look at them and win their cards away, one after the other—ah! ”

“ The thoughts of a captive can no more get beyond his prison-walls than his limbs, unless they are busied in planning an escape; as, on the contrary, what prisoner, after effecting his escape, ever suffered them to return there, or took common precautions to prevent his own? ”

“ O Mores! how subverted are the lock-up-houses of this day: the instant a debtor enters one of these confines, a temporary hell presents itself. He is hemmed in and surrounded by a set of wretches, whose daily bread depends on the misfortunes of others; on the one side he hears pettyfoggers reading lectures on the Theory of vice, on the other, bailiffs urging the necessity of its Practice; before him are raigned the unhappy pupils, industriously improving on their infernal precepts, and rendering fraud, perjury, rapine, and every degree of robbery, as mechanical as shoe-making ”

“ I tell you here that, out of a life earnestly devoted to the good of human kind, your children will recollect my going to Richmond and signing the bail-bond as the wisest act, and will feel that it did more for freedom and humanity than all of you were competent to do, though you had lived to the age of Methuselah. ”

“ All regular figures should be studiously avoided.—The light had been well distributed, if the bailiff holding the arrest, and the chairman, had been a little lighter, and the woman darker. The glare of the white apron is disagreeable.—We have, in this print, some beautiful instances of expression. The surprise and terror of the poor gentleman is apparent in every limb, as far as is consistent with the fear of discomposing his dress. The insolence of power in one of the bailiffs, and the unfeeling heart, which can jest with misery, in the other, are strongly marked. ”

“ He had stood in danger of arrest; of bailiffs, and a jail—a vulgar jail, to which the common people with small incomes went. Gentlemen of ancient houses have no privilege of exemption from such cruel laws—unless they are of one great house, and then they have. ”

“ Every thoughtless squire supposes that, with the aid of his ignorant bailiff, he can effect a perfect drainage of his estate; but there is a worse man behind the squire and the bailiff,—the draining conjuror. ”

“ He had several times endeavored to obtain a situation as bailiff, but others more fortunate, perhaps better qualified, filled up every vacancy that offered, and the almost desperate man, but for the pleading helplessness of his wife and child, would have sought shelter in the ranks of the army—that grave in which so many withered prospects and broken hopes lie buried. ”

“ But you had better take my advice and go slow, or you'll soon find yourself in jail again."
"You must have followed us in a boat. Where is your craft?"
"Another question which I am not answering. Do you surrender?" ”

“ The bailiffs went up into the corridors to call for those who were to go off, and only allowed them a quarter of an hour to prepare. Each bade the other an eternal farewell; we were in a stunned condition, being only sure of living from ten o'clock in the morning until seven o'clock in the evening. Sleep was light when one suffered such anxiety, and was frequently interrupted by the arrival of convoys. ”

“ After a day or two, as they are joined by others, they come to have misgivings. Perhaps they ask to be let out, and then they find that they are indeed prisoners. They are told that they are in debt and will be held until they work out their debt. ”

“ After the endurance of a week's delirium, madness, and unconsciousness, they generally find themselves, when robbed of the greater portion of their hard-got earnings, thrust upon the world penniless, wretched, dispirited, and sick, to seek employment and re-enact the same scenes of solitary penance and wild debauchery. ”

“ The narrow escape which they had had of being sent to prison, the disgrace of being arrested and publicly censured, the averted looks of their neighbours, and the removal from the place of the young men with whom they had been used to associate, combined to produce a great effect upon them. ”

“ The head men of the villages and the serfs were utterly bamboozled: one landlord required carts to convey his household, the second demanded hay, and the third, fire-wood; each of the three issued orders, and sent his man of business to see that they were carried out. If the eldest brother appointed a bailiff, the other two dismissed the man in a month on some absurd pretext, and appointed another, who was promptly disowned by their senior. ”

“ See the next word
mayn-prise (A.N.) 70, 346, a kind of bail, a law term. "It signifieth in our Common Law the taking or receiving a man in friendly custodie, that otherwise is or might be committed to prison, and so upon securitie given for his forth coming at a day assigned: and they that doe thus undertake for any, are called mainpernours, because they do receive him into their hands." ”