House Republicans last week excoriated their fellow Americans as a bunch of deadbeats casually running up debts and then disingenuously pleading bankruptcy to wipe their slates clean.

A record 1.4 million people declared bankruptcy last year -- evidence, lawmakers said, that a tighter law and more personal responsibility were in order.

The Republicans did not mention that one of their party's most prominent members was a self-declared ''insolvent debtor'' who would surely have filed for bankruptcy had the current laws been available to him.

In 1832 a young man named Abraham Lincoln bought a small general store in New Salem, Ill., with a partner. On credit, they acquired the inventory of other nearby stores.