ocks, bolts, bars, and
such like other little impediments to old misers, who kept their gold
molding in chests till such honest fellows, at the hazard of their
lives, came to set at liberty. For my part_, continued he, _I believe
Queen Anne's war swept away the last remains of these brave spirits; for
since the Peace of Utrac (as I think they call it) we have had a
wondrous growth of blockheads, even in our business. And if it were not
for Shephard and Frazier, a hundred years hence, they would not think
that in our times there were fellows bold enough to get sixpence out of
a legal road, or dare to do anything without a quirk of the law to
screen them._

All his auditors were wonderfully pleased with such discourses as these,
and when the liquor had a little warmed them, would each in their turn
tell a multitude of stories they had heard of the boldness, cunning, and
dexterity of the thieves who lived before them. In all cases whatever,
evil is much sooner learnt than good, and a night debauch makes a ten
times greater impression on the spirits than the most eloquent sermon.
Between the liquor and the tales people begin to form new ideas to
themselves of things, and instead of looking on robbery as rapine and
stealing as a villainous method of defrauding another, they, on the
contrary, take the first for a gallant action, and the latter for a
dexterous piece of cunning; by either of which they acquire the means of
indulging themselves in what best suits their inclinations, without the
fatigue of business or the drudgery of hard labour.

Reynolds, though a very stupid fellow, soon became a convert to these
notions, and lost no time in putting them in execution, for the next
night he took from a person (who it seems knew him and his haunts well
enough) a coat and a shilling, which when he came to be indicted for the
fact, he pretended they were given him to prevent his charging the
prosecutor with an attempt to commit sodomy--an excuse which of late
years is grown as common with the men, as it has long been with the
women to pretend money was given them for flogging folks, when they have
been brought to the bar for picking it out of their pockets; hoping by
this reverberation of ignominy to blacken each other so that the jury
may believe neither. However, in this case, it must be acknowledged that
Reynolds went to death with the assertion that he received the coat and
the shilling on the before-mentioned account, and th