THE LEADING PROFESSION.

[The following paper was written before we had a Preventive Police; before Prisons were regulated upon some system, however imperfect; and when the terror of Capital Punishments—always threatened, but capriciously inflicted—was the sole principle upon which crime was sought to be repressed. We are in many respects wiser than we were thirty years ago; but a consideration of what we have amended may lead us to meditate upon what we have still to amend.]

THE choice of a profession was at all times an affair of difficulty, and it has become peculiarly so at a period when the avenues to success, whether in the walks of theology, of law, or of medicine, are blocked up by a crowd of eager competitors. Nor is the path to wealth, by the more beaten track of commercial pursuits, less impeded by the struggles of rivalry, the intrigues of connexion, or the overwhelming preponderance of enormous capital. For adventurous young men, not cursed by nature with a modest or studious turn, and who are impatient to take the post of honour by a coup-de-main, a state of war offers the ample field of the profession of arms; but in a time of peace that field is narrowed to a very aristocratic circle, and the plebeian spirit learns to be tamed in the never-ending rebuffs of the Horse Guards and of the Admiralty. All things considered, and

with a due regard to the necessary education, the certain rewards, and the few chances of failure, it appears to us that the profession which involves the least individual expense in its necessary studies, the aspirants being constantly trained at the public cost—which is supported by the greatest excitement of popular observation so as to satisfy the most insatiate appetite for fame-which presents the most open field for exertion, so as to leave the adventurer the largest choice of opportunities and which is fenced round from the attacks of private envy or revenge by the most powerful support of individual functionaries-that most cherished and honoured profession is that of a THIEF!

And, first, of the education of this profession.

We will imagine a youth to whom the honours of his calling are not hereditary. He has been brought up, as other youths are, either in absolute ignorance of the world which has preceded him, and the world which is before him; or with such an acquaintance with the tendencies of mankind as they are learned in the book of history, or the safer volumes of experience, as will satisfy him that the least successful of the sons of men are the most conscientious. If he be utterly uninstructed in book-learning, and yet have a tolerable acquaintance with the things around him, he will see (if he open his eyes) that the one thing needful is money;—that cunning has a much surer grasp of that summum bonum than wisdom; -and that the contempt of society is only reserved

for the poor. Hence poverty, as Talleyrand said of the execution of the Duc d'Enghien, is worse than a crime-it is a blunder. If he derive his knowledge from the half truths, half fables of his species, he will discover that fraud and violence have always secured to themselves a much larger portion of what are called the blessings of life— competency, luxury, high station, influence, command-than sincerity and moderation. If he live in the country, he has constantly presented to his eyes the condition of a vast many miserable people, who are reduced to the utmost extremity of perpetual suffering-their honest pride trampled upon, their affections outraged, their commonest wants unsupplied, and for no personal demerit that he can perceive, but because they are laborious, patient, inoffensive, easily satisfied, content to do their duty in the station to which they are born. If he abide in a city, he discovers that most direct modes of obtaining a living are ill paid-that squalid filth follows the scanty earnings of the mechanic-that the tradesman who vends an honest. commodity cannot compete with the quack and the puffer—that insolent vice always thrusts modest virtue into the kennel. In either case he perceives that mankind, directly or indirectly, spend their lives in endeavours to abstract more than they have a right to abstract from the property of their neighbours. He commences, by dint of hard reasoning, a professional career of resolving to practise that philosophy which

teaches him that the institutions of society are chains only for the weak. If he be a peasant, he tries his hand at poaching; if a London blackguard, at picking pockets. In either case the law soon takes charge of his further education; and he is duly sent to that most instructive Alma Mater, -a prison.

The care which is now bestowed upon the nurture of his infant hopes is prodigious. He has abundant leisure for the cultivation of his faculties; he has no anxiety about the events of the passing day; he is introduced to the full enjoyment of the society of the most careless, enthusiastic, and undaunted men in existence, as well as to the ablest instructors in his peculiar art.

All knowledge, but that which is to lead him to excellence in the profession which he now must choose, is despised;-all views of the social state, but those which regard man as a predatory animal, are held to be low and unattractive ;--all employments of the talents of the human race, but those which present themselves to the lion heart in the shape of burglary, and to the cautious understanding in the not less attractive forms of coining and shoplifting, are pronounced to be mean and ungratifying.

The facility with which the profession of a thief is acquired is a wonderful recommendation of its excellent and manifold advantages. In this college, the honours are bestowed after an examination for which the previous study is very inconsiderable

the "wooden spoon" feels that his rank is by no means settled in the estimation of his examiners, but that a successful adventure may place him in the first degree of the beloved of Bow-street ;and even he that is "plucked" for wanting in the reckless qualities by which excellence is attained, may hope to prepare himself next session (the "term" of our houses of felonious maintenance) for the most distinguished companionship of that fraternity, which, above all others, generously delights in imparting its blessings to novices by the most unremitting system of proselytism.

Nor is it any degradation from the agreeable nature of this education (when compared to education in general) to say, that the student often receives bodily chastisement in the progress of his willing labours. The laws have no punishments which touch his mind. If he be remanded to his prison, he is only condemned to a further acquaintance with the agreeable society to which he was introduced when he first entered its walls. He has formed friendships which will last for life; he is secure of patronage when he comes out again upon the stirring world; he will, in future, have no lack of counsellors and abettors. Admit that he is sentenced to be privately whipped; in this he does not differ an ounce from the highest of the land. The boys of the middle classes have been gradually becoming more exempt from the terrors of indecent bodily chastisement; but inflictions upon the person are still the peculiar privilege of the noble students