value, without a single
good quality in the world, is not hanged, and probably will remain so.
You ask the reason why, perhaps. I'll tell you; the lack of a certain
quality called courage, which Jack possessed in abundance, will preserve
him; from the love which he bears his own neck he will do nothing which
can bring him to the gallows. In my rough way I'll draw their characters
from their childhood, and then ask whether Jack was not the best
character of the two. Jack was a rough, audacious boy, fond of fighting,
going a birds'-nesting, but I never heard he did anything particularly
cruel save once, I believe, tying a canister to a butcher's dog's tail;
whilst this fellow of a lord was by nature a savage beast, and when a boy
would in winter pluck poor fowls naked, and set them running on the ice
and in the snow, and was particularly fond of burning cats alive in the
fire. Jack, when a lad, gets a commission on board a ship as an officer
of horse marines, and in two or three engagements behaves quite up to the
mark--at least of a marine; the marines having no particular character
for courage, you know--never having run to the guns and fired them like
madmen after the blue jackets had had more than enough. Oh, dear me, no!
My lord gets into the valorous British army, where cowardice--Oh, dear
me!--is a thing almost entirely unknown; and being on the field of
Waterloo the day before the battle, falls off his horse, and, pretending
to be hurt in the back, gets himself put on the sick list--a pretty
excuse--hurting his back--for not being present at such a fight. Old
Benbow, after part of both his legs had been shot away in a sea-fight,
made the carpenter make him a cradle to hold his bloody stumps, and
continued on deck, cheering his men till he died. Jack returns home, and
gets into trouble, and having nothing to subsist by but his wits, gets
his living by the ring and the turf, doing many an odd kind of thing, I
dare say, but not half those laid to his charge. My lord does much the
same without the excuse for doing so which Jack had, for he had plenty of
means, is a leg, and a black, only in a more polished way, and with more
cunning, and I may say success, having done many a rascally thing never
laid to his charge. Jack at last cuts the throat of a villain who had
cheated him of all he had in the world, and who, I am told, was in many
points the counterpart of this screw and white feather, is taken up,
tried,