If he was unable to do so, or was friendly to the
criminal, he still secured the reward by giving false information
against an innocent person, and supported his assertions by the perjury
of his subordinates. By these methods he soon grew rich. He carried a
silver wand which he asserted to be a badge of office given him by the
government, and entered into secret leagues with corrupt magistrates.
After a time he called himself a gentleman, and wore a sword, the first
use of which was to cut off his wife's ear. At last he was detected in
aiding the escape of a highwayman confined in Newgate, and being
deprived of his power, he was easily convicted. He was hung in 1725,
and on his way to the scaffold was almost pelted to death by the mob.
The impunity with which Wild followed his long career of crime was not
unusual. The authorities were inefficient and corrupt. Fielding,
himself a police justice, makes a magistrate say in "Amelia": "And to
speak my opinion plainly, such are the laws and such the method of
proceeding that one would almost think our laws were made for the
protection of rogues, rather than for the punishment of them." The laws
bore hardly upon the poor and spared the rich. "The parson," complained
Defoe in the "Poor Man's Plea," "preaches a thundering sermon against
drunkenness, and the justice of the peace sets my poor neighbor in the
stocks, and I am like to be much the better for either, when I know
perhaps that this same parson and this same justice were both drunk
together but the night before.
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