do not treat them quite after the manner
followed by our forefathers: and, as their methods were incapable of
putting a stop to the tricks of those who live by trickery, so are ours;
therefore we must not pride ourselves on any superiority in this
direction. A large and very interesting collection of books might be
formed on the subject of rogues and vagabonds. The collection would
begin with Elizabeth and could be carried on to the present day, new
additions being made from year to year. But very few additions are ever
made to the customs and the methods of the profession. For instance,
there is the confidence trick, in which the rustic is beguiled by the
honest stranger into trusting him. This trick was practised three
hundred years ago. Or there is the ring-dropping trick, it is as old as
the hills. Or there is the sham sailor--now very rarely met with. When
we have another war he will come to the front again. We have still the
cheating gambler, but he has always been with us. In King Charles the
Second's time he was called a Ruffler, a Huff, or a Shabbaroon. The
woman who now begs along the streets singing a hymn and leading borrowed
children, did the same thing two hundred years ago and was called a
clapperdozen. The man who pretends to be deaf and dumb went about then,
and was known as the dummerer. The burglar was then the housebreaker.
Burglary was formerly a far worse crime than it is now, because the
people for the most part kept all their money in their houses, and a
robbery might ruin them. The pickpocket plied his trade, only he was
then a cutpurse. The footpad lay in wait on the lonely country road or
among the bushes of the open fields at the back of Lincoln's Inn. The
punishments, which seem so mild under the Plantagenets, increased in
severity as the population outgrew the powers of the government. Instead
of plain standing in pillory, ears were nailed to the post and even
sliced off: whippings became more commonly administered, and were much
more severe: heretics were burned by Elizabeth as well as by Mary,
though not so often. After the civil wars we enter upon a period when
punishment became savage in its cruelty, of which you will presently
learn more. Meantime remark that when the City was less densely
populated, and when none lived outside the wards and walls, the people
were well under the control of the aldermen and their officers: they
were also well known to each other: they exercised that
sel