Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/250

234 precautions are deemed necessary for the decent and respectable part of the community; for, although the chief part of the wretches who have been entrapped into the commission of crimes, were poor,—yet we have reason to think, the blood hounds will take other grounds, and seek for higher victims. What, for example, is a decent and respectable man (however innocent) to do, when pounced upon and searched, there is found in his pockets a quantity of forged notes, or false coin? No matter how they came there; whether they were dropped into his pocket in the street, or in the public house (while perhaps he was a little drunk);—or whether the base imitations were concealed in the officer's hand, and pretended (upon oath) that they were found in his pockets,—his good character, his innocence, will stand him in no stead; but he must, under the present administration of our criminal code, suffer the law, and the officer pockets the money, which is the price and the reward of his villainy!

Two boys were served in this manner on Towerhill, a few years ago, by one of the five hellish villains named above: that they were not hanged was through no omission of his, nor did his soul receive any consolation probably