needy; nor do they resort together at any known place of rendezvous to which they may be traced, or their movements watched. The whole body are well organized, and in as perfect a state of subordination as the British army is under those who preside at the Horse Guards. Some are employed as scouts or lookers-out for fit places for attack; these are kept as gentlemen in appearance, never connecting themselves with any actual commission of robbery, or the possession of property when stolen; nor do those who commit the robbery know any thing of the persons who are the real movers of all the affairs of the concern.

The manner in which I was engaged into one of these confederacies (for there are several in London) will give some idea of the perfection of their system. The acquaintance I had made introduced me to several of his associates, who, as it afterwards appeared, were some of the working hands of a party of burglars of the class last described. Our interviews were at their own private lodgings and not at public-houses, as I had been accustomed to meet my former acquaintances; they did occasionally go to take a pipe and a glass, but then they uniformly selected the most respectable houses where tradesmen met to enjoy a social hour together.

Although I had said I would join them, as yet they had imparted none of their secrets to me. One day, my friend, to whom I was indebted for my introduction, told me I must take a walk down the King's Road, towards Chelsea, with him that morning. To this I readily complied without asking him for any reasons. When, however, we reached the top of Sloane Street, we met a person, who came up and said to my companion, "You may go!" then, turning to me, continued, "Come, you and I will have a walk into the country and dine together to-day." Then turning down a bye-way, went on to say, "You have been spoken of very highly, but you are now coming into a line of business which it is my duty to explain to you, and to that end are we now met; you cannot but consider yourself fortunate in joining such a respectable concern.' He then laid a strong injunction on me to recollect every word he uttered, as his duty would be performed when we parted: he strongly inculcated sobriety of conduct, and expatiated largely upon the necessity of giving up all my former acquaintances, and abandoning my haunts for smoking tobacco and drinking as I had been accustomed to do; telling me that, as I should always be supplied with money, I had better go into the society of respectable tradesmen, where I was not known. When we arrived at Fulham he ordered a fowl and some pickled pork for our dinner, and then renewed the conversation, cautioning me especially against committing any petty theft for the supply of present need, saying it would now be inexcusable, because, if I were prudent, I could not want money.

He further informed me that the business I should have to perform would be all straightforward work, unaccompanied with any risk, compared to my former mode of proceeding, but of that I should be better informed, when he sent me to another person; concluding by saying, that all property which came into my hands must be faithfully delivered, untouched, according to the directions in every case given; and that any deviation from such a line of conduct could not fail of being fatal to me, because, as the society gave liberal per centages upon all property which came into their possession, they exacted the strictest account from indi viduals, nor would they leave unpunished a dishonest member of their community, when detected; adding, that their measures were so well taken, that none who attempted to appropriate to themselves property unfairly could escape detection. He then put ten pounds into my hand, together with a card, on which was written, "Be at the gate of the alms.. houses opposite the Elephant and Castle at twelve o'clock to-morrow

morning;" after which he paid for our dinner and wine, and then wished me good day.

Turning over in my mind, as I returned to town, all the particulars of this interview, I was struck with the threat held out, that any deviation from the rules laid down would be fatal to me; this part of the conversation occupied all my thoughts, and it was not until the following day that I penetrated its full meaning, viz.-that as the primary movers of all the plans were always kept in the back-ground, and never known to the subordinate operatives, all schemes for obtaining property necessarily must be issued from their incognito superiors, who could, at any time, send their workmen upon such jobs as should ensure their certain apprehension and subsequent conviction; and this the leading men can accomplish without any risk on their own part, when they have a faithless or an obnoxious auxiliary among them.

On my arrival in town I immediately proceeded to the lodgings of my friend who had introduced me to this party, but to my surprise he had left town, and all my subsequent inquiries, to find where he was gone, among his companions, and at the well-known places of rendezvous, proved fruitless, nor did I see him, or hear in any way from him, for two years afterwards, when I learnt that he had been suddenly ordered into the country, to work at a branch station, precisely at the time I was about to be placed among strangers, -a piece of policy our employers have very excellent reasons for adopting.

The following morning I obeyed my instructions, and went to the gate of the Fishmongers' Company's alms-houses, where stood a person who knew me, although I had no knowledge of him. The moment he saw me, he came up, and accosting me, said, It appears that you and I are to do some business together, (showing me a duplicate card to my own,) come, let us walk away from here." We then proceeded a little way down the road, when a Croydon coach passing, he proposed that we should both get on it: as I entered no demurrer to this measure, we were soon seated, and carried, without another word being spoken by either of us, ten miles from the noisy metropolis. We dined and spent the day at Croydon, during which he further enlightened my mind upon the perfect system of robbery, by which the party with which I was now connected conducted their affairs. He then gave me to understand that our employers were real swells, (gentlemen in appearance, judging also from the company they kept,) but that they were invisible to all the men who performed the actual work, their avocations being confined to invention, discovery, the obtaining information, and issuing orders, besides that of disbursing a fair proportion of the receipts, and withholding a capital to support their retainers, when there was no employment for them. "These orders," said he, "they give out in such a manner, and with so much secret judgment, that none of the operatives can possibly ever know whence they originate: this," he added, with remarkable emphasis," they accomplish with an astonishing degree of certainty ;" saying, "whoever they may be, they, for certes, have longer heads than our pudding-knobbed legislators: it's a great pity for the sake of the nation they can't be found out, and persuaded to form an administration among themselves for the better government of the country; it would then," continued he, "be soon made apparent to the world that Metternich and Talleyrand were mere asinine politicians." Going on in this strain, he added, "There's myself now, I am but a messenger, a mercury among these gods, a kind of call-boy, to use a theatrical phrase; I summon the actors to the stage, and deliver out the instructions for the guidance of individuals who are selected to give effect to, and perfect the performance of the drama; but then I know nothing of the author or stage manager, neither have I, or shall I, ever be admitted to the green

room. Although I am now about to deliver you your first orders from these incognito great men, mind, I know not from whence they come, or who issued them; they were left at my house in writing from an unknown hand. I am regularly paid, and therefore prudently abstain from further inquiry, which might lead to my ruin, without offering a chance of doing me any further good. And now, sir, before I conclude," looking me hard in the face, he continued, "let me give you one general and serious piece of advice-perform your duty rigidly, maintain, upon all occasions, a respectable appearance, and never attempt to penetrate their secrets ; if you do, you are assuredly an undone man. Remember my words, nothing can save you; for if you quit the service, and embark in another line, either for yourself or other persons, on the first affair you are concerned in you will be apprehended, and have for your opponents a more fearful enemy than Bow-street officers-those who will unerringly bring the whole weight of the law upon you." Hearing this, I expressed some surprise: my companion, however, soon made me understand that they had emissaries all over the town and country, and that when a black mark was placed against a man's name, they very soon caused his apprehension, because he must, when they withheld his supplies, either consent to go on such jobs as they ordered, or undertake private business of robbery; and in both cases they would give information to occasion his conviction; besides, afterwards, sending to the Secretary of State's office accounts of his bad character, and the number of robberies in which he had been concerned. These reports they, and all others connected with the family men, well know are received and swallowed with great avidity at head quarters, and used as plaisters to heal the lacerated feelings of any soft-hearted, non-hanging applicant for mercy at the hands of the king, as it is erroneously termed. Concluding with

"For men ere now grown wise, and understand
How to improve their crimes as well as land;
And if th' have issue, make the infants pay
Down for their own begetting, on the day,
The charges of the gossipping disburse,

And pay before-hand (ere they're born) the nurse."

Although this at first appeared harsh conduct on the part of the great men in our walk of life, I could not, on reflection, but acknowledge that it arose from expediency; and was justified upon the same principle, as are the pressing seamen and flogging in the army, and that law advocated by many of our great men in the parliament-house--the law of necessity; which law, by the way, nobody understands better than myself, for this reason -all the actions of my life, up to the present moment of my writing this, have been the result, and under the control, of this said despotic rule of individuals. It is true that, although I could not choose my path in the world, I might, if I pleased, have stood still: in other words, I might have put an end to my life instead of becoming a thief; but for not taking the latter course, I have two good reasons to urge. Firstly, that the desire to preserve life is a principle in men which predominates over all others, more especially with the younger subjects of the creation; this principle is the ruling power of action in every animal, but in man, when opposed to honour, honesty, and other moral laws, it overturns and tramples them under feet, in spite of all saws and modern cant.

I will grant that there are some few exceptions-instances, for example, wherein the parties have had the instruction of some parson in false notions, regarding the laws and operations of nature; setting up other gods and idols for worship instead of nature's God, thereby producing an imbecility of the mind, and the destruction of the natural feelings of man; and this they term wisdom, such as only a few can comprehend.

*

My second reason for not getting out of my thraldom by committing suicide, was, that I often heard the parson say in his sermons, there was no crime so great as that of self-murder. I therefore availed myself of his doctrine, and chose the lesser evil of stealing, instead of starving, or throwing myself from one of the bridges.

When, however, I was younger, and used to think more of the many strange doctrines I heard from the pulpit, and went to see men executed, I thought it very odd logic, that if a man could not lawfully deprive himself of life, that it should be made lawful to take away the lives of thousands by the hands of man. I once mentioned these, my scruples, when I first took office, to our Newgate Ordinary; who told me to do as he did, bow to the necessity of the thing, and not inquire too nicely into the conduct of our superiors. This way of settling the matter, however, never quite satisfied me, although I for a time fell into it, always when I was called to duty, thinking upon that law of necessity, which, according to the parson's rule, reverses the order of all things, and converts wrong into right, and vice versâ.

In my latter days, although I was never given to put much faith in what great men or the parson said, yet I must confess, when I thought of my own life, that it was a great comfort to me to hear them all justify so many measures upon the plea of necessity.

"Who would believe, that wicked earth,

Where nature only brings us forth,
To be found guilty, and forgiven,
Should be a nursery for heaven."

Yes; for when the Secretary of State is hard of heart, and will not, for a parent or a wife on their knees, vouchsafe the life of a wretch in this world, in steps the puritanical parson and grants him a full and free one for the next.

"Such is the parson's arbitrary power,

It were defect in judgment to go lower."

Heaven is peremptorily called upon to forgive those sins which guilty man will not, and the unhappy culprit is assured of receiving that mercy and forbearance from the Deity, which man, judging from his actions, has no faculties to comprehend.

But I must go on with my story, or I shall get myself into a dispute with the learned, when I know I shall have the worst of the argument, because they can twist the subject about in any direction but the straight one. I cannot, however, resist making a few remarks in this place on myself, and the cause which placed me under the tyrant law of necessity. I call upon all the world, who are disposed to view things as they are, and can reason justly upon the affairs of life, to bear in mind that my situation, on coming into existence, was not one of choice, but was, like thousands of others, the result, most probably, of some great man's wantonness in his youth, or it may be in his more advanced years. He seduced, I have reason to presume, my mother by fair promises, deceiving and abandoning her to the gibes and sneers of the world, which, together with the frowns of her family and sex, overthrew her reason. She had still enough of the parent left to deposit me in a basket, and offer up to Heaven an incoherent prayer for my preservation, and then threw

If any of my readers should wonder at one of my course of life going often to church, I beg to remind them, that the number of times I had been in prison compelled me to hear more sermons in my time, than one in a thousand does voluntarily; besides, when a buzman, we often did a good stroke of business at church, especially when a bishop or a nob preached.

herself into the waters, becoming food for the fishes of the sea, one of which, a few weeks after gorging himself repeatedly upon the body of her whose soul was fled to heaven, there to await for justice, may be served up to my worthy father's table, and pronounced at dinner to be a fish of a most delicious and superior quality. This is horrible to think on, but great men, and those who are educated to emulate greatness, have monstrous and strange stomachs; they seek their own enjoyment, but leave the innocent products of their fruition to

Want, worldly want, that hungry, meagre fiend,
Was at my heels, and chased me in view.

While I may suppose my father became a great parliamentary character, framing and supporting, with lengthy speeches, the enactment of rigid laws against the poor, and all criminals in general, forgetful that he brought five more besides myself into life, placing us all in such a situation, and compelling us to pursue a course in society, which make, these very laws needful for its protection.

Unmindful, too, that no statutes can convert us into any thing than that we are, and which our wise and moral parent made us by his vices, which, however, does not in any way interfere with his subsequently marrying and becoming the father of another family, every member of which he is proud to own, and acquires a name for being a good man, and a worthy member of the community. Such is the path of your legislative moralist.

"Like gaudy ships, the obsequious billows fall,
And rise again, to lift you in your pride;
They wait but for a storm, and then devour you."

To those, who, like me, have felt the cruel conduct of libidinous fathers, I need offer no apology for this break in my narrative, to which I now

return.

"I have," said the party from whom I was receiving my instructions, "three jobs on hand, this is the list," showing me a paper; "the one selected for you is of very easy performance; a stage coach is to be robbed, and the booty is supposed to amount to some thousands." "Good God!" I exclaimed, "do you call this an easy job?"

"Nothing so easy," he rejoined, as you will see. You are to be only a looker on, and yet the affair cannot be completed without you, or some one in your place; the fact is, our party must occupy all the inside seats, and one is assigned to you. Here are your instructions in writing, with a ten-pound note; provide yourself with a cloak, having a good high collar to it; you will find your advantage in possessing such a one to crouch the face into occasionally, and mind, upon all country jobs carry your money about you, because, should there be any accident, you should always possess the means of crossing the country as rapidly as possible, but upon this occasion the thing is as good as done. You will see by your instructions, that you are to proceed to Birmingham, and immediately book yourself, for an inside place, for next Thursday, by the coach for London; take your seat in the coach early, but do not notice any one you see until the coach is on its journey, and then wait to be spoken to, and for instructions how to act subsequently.

"The money now given you, together with that you received yesterday, is charged to your account, and will be deducted from your regulars when the affair is ended; but in the share allowed you will not be permitted to have a voice, as the parties have one rule from which they never deviate. When you arrive again in town, pass one whole week in your own way, only avoiding your former associates, and keep respect