I always am found out;
have been; shall be. It's my luck. Other men will carry off bushels
of fruit, and get away undetected, unsuspected; whereas I know woe and
punishment would fall upon me were I to lay my hand on the smallest
pippin. So be it. A man who has this precious self-knowledge will surely
keep his hands from picking and stealing, and his feet upon the paths of
virtue.
I will assume, my benevolent friend and present reader, that you
yourself are virtuous, not from a fear of punishment, but from a sheer
love of good: but us you and I walk through life, consider what hundreds
of thousands of rascals we must have met, who have not been found out at
all. In high places and low, in Clubs and on 'Change, at church or
the balls and routs of the nobility and gentry, how dreadful it is for
benevolent beings like you and me to have to think these undiscovered
though not unsuspected scoundrels are swarming! What is the difference
between you and a galley-slave? Is yonder poor wretch at the hulks not a
man and a brother too? Have you ever forged, my dear sir? Have you ever
cheated your neighbor? Have you ever ridden to Hounslow Heath and robbed
the mail? Have you ever entered a first-class railway carriage, where an
old gentleman sat alone in a sweet sleep, daintily murdered him, taken
his pocket-book, and got out at the next station? You know that this
circumstance occurred in France a few months since.
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