Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/244

228 lives of others to their mad ambition, or the resentment of injuries,—real or supposed. But that we should live in times when the persons employed in the detection of crime (for which we pay them) should perfidiously assist in its perpetration; and not only so, but that subsequently thereto they should bring the offending wretches to an ignominious death, and that too under the semblance of justice,—is really too much for ns to think of, without pain and grief. Moderately as we wish to bring ourselves to the subject, in order to view with calmness the atrocious deeds daily passing under our eyes, a deep indignation, crying for vengeance, swells our bosom, and almost suffocates the whisperings of deliberative retribution. The ardour of the soul outstrips the chastened mind, in the pursuit of criminals, such as those we contemplate, and asks the cool and enquiring hand of justice to lay on without delay its unsparing vengeance.

Until very lately we had thought the case of Jonathan Wild and the officers of 1788, the only instance in England of employed men bartering in blood for money. We knew and often witnessed the too much avidity of officers to convict capitally; and we have seen and heard with proper feelings, pretended