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
785] 25C