I Essays J 
avidity, the alien: appetens, is the same; it is the fear 
alone of the gallows that makes the difference. How 
then can a nation which, among the honestest of its 
people, has so many thieves by inclination, and whose 
government encouraged and commissioned no less 
than seven hundred gangs of robbers,—how can such 
a nation have the face to condemn the crime in in- 
dividuals, and hang up twenty of them in a morning? 
It naturally puts one in mind of a Newgate anecdote. 
One of the prisoners complained that in the night 
somebody had taken his buckles out of his shoes. 
“What, the devil!” says another, “have we then 
thieves among us? It must not be suffered; let us 
search out the rogue, and pump him to death.” 
There is, however, one late instance of an English 
merchant who will not profit by such ill-gotten gains. 
He was, it seems, part-owner of a ship, which the 
other owners thought fit to employ as a letter of 
marque, and which took a number of French prizes. 
The booty being shared, he has now an agent here 
inquiring, by an advertisement in the gazette, for 
those who suffered the loss, in order to make them, 
as far as in him lies, restitution. This conscientious 
man is a Quaker. The Scotch Presbyterians were 
formerly as tender; for there is still extant an ordi- 
nance of the town council of Edinburgh, made soon 
after the Reformation, “forbidding the purchase of 
prize goods, under pain of losing the freedom of the 
burgh forever, with other punishment at the will of 
the magistrate; the practice of making prizes being 
contrary to good conscience and the rule of treating 
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