remain any time
formidable to the public.

I had delayed my Bath journey for some time, contrary to the repeated
advice of my physical acquaintance, and to the ardent desire of my
warmest friends, though my distemper was now turned to a deep jaundice;
in which case the Bath waters are generally reputed to be almost
infallible. But I had the most eager desire of demolishing this gang of
villains and cut-throats, which I was sure of accomplishing the moment
I was enabled to pay a fellow who had undertaken, for a small sum, to
betray them into the hands of a set of thief-takers whom I had
enlisted into the service, all men of known and approved fidelity and
intrepidity.

After some weeks the money was paid at the treasury, and within a few
days after two hundred pounds of it had come to my hands, the whole
gang of cut-throats was entirely dispersed, seven of them were in actual
custody, and the rest driven, some out of the town, and others out of
the kingdom. Though my health was now reduced to the last extremity,
I continued to act with the utmost vigor against these villains; in
examining whom, and in taking the depositions against them, I have often
spent whole days, nay, sometimes whole nights, especially when there was
any difficulty in procuring sufficient evidence to convict them; which
is a very common case in street-robberies, even when the guilt of the
party is sufficiently apparent to satisfy the most tender conscience.
But courts of justice know nothing of a cause more than what is told
them on oath by a witness; and the most flagitious villain upon earth is
tried in the same manner as a man of the best character who is accused
of the same crime. Meanwhile, amidst all my fatigues and distresses, I
had the satisfaction to find my endeavors had been attended with such
success that this hellish society were almost utterly extirpated, and
that, instead of reading of murders and street-robberies in the news
almost every morning, there was, in the remaining part of the month of
November, and in all December, not only no such thing as a murder, but
not even a street-robbery committed. Some such, indeed, were mentioned
in the public papers; but they were all found on the strictest inquiry,
to be false. In this entire freedom from street-robberies, during the
dark months, no man will, I believe, scruple to acknowledge that the
winter of 1753 stands unrivaled, during a course of many years; and this
may possibly appea