Read him yourselves, fathers, and you
will find it word for word, as I have done. Here it is: "The same
thing is apparent from the authorities cited, particularly in regard
to that property which he acquires after his failure, out of which
even the delinquent debtor may retain as much as is necessary for
his honourable maintenance, according to his station of life- ut non
indecore vivat. Do you ask if this rule applies to goods which he
possessed at the time of his failure? Such seems to be the judgement
of the doctors."
I shall not stop here to show how Lessius, to sanction his
maxim, perverts the law that allows bankrupts nothing more than a mere
livelihood, and that makes no provision for "honourable
maintenance." It is enough to have vindicated Escobar from such an
accusation- it is more, indeed, than what I was in duty bound to do.
But you, fathers, have not done your duty. It still remains for you to
answer the passage of Escobar, whose decisions, by the way, have
this advantage, that, being entirely independent of the context and
condensed in little articles, they are not liable to your
distinctions. I quoted the whole of the passage, in which "bankrupts
are permitted to keep their goods, though unjustly acquired, to
provide an honourable maintenance for their families"- commenting on
which in my letters, I exclaim: "Indeed, father! by what strange
kind of charity would you have the ill-gotten property of a bankrupt
appropriated to his own use, instead of that of his lawful creditors?"
This is the question which must be answered; but it is one that
involves you in a sad dilemma, and from which you in vain seek to
escape by altering the state of the question, and quoting other
passages from Lessius, which have no connection with the subject.
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