Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/177

Rh Meanwhile, Paul was conducted in state to his retreat, in company with two other offenders, one a middle-aged man, though a very old 'file,' who was sentenced for getting money under false pretences, and the other a little boy, who had been found guilty of sleeping under a colonnade: it being the especial beauty of the English law, to make no fine-drawn and nonsensical shades of difference between vice and misfortune; and its peculiar method of protecting the honest being, to make as many rogues as possible in as short a space of time.