t errand. He will very greedily take a cut with a sword, and suck
more silver out of the wound than his surgeon shall. His beginning is
detestable, his courses desperate, and his end damnable.

A COMMON CRUEL JAILOR

Is a creature mistaken in the making, for he should be a tiger; but the
shape being thought too terrible, it is covered, and he wears the vizor
of a man, yet retains the qualities of his former fierceness,
currishness, and ravening. Of that red earth of which man was fashioned
this piece was the basest, of the rubbish which was left and thrown by
came this jailor; his descent is then more ancient, but more ignoble,
for he comes of the race of those angels that fell with Lucifer from
heaven, whither he never (or very hardly) returns. Of all his bunches of
keys not one hath wards to open that door, for this jailor's soul stands
not upon those two pillars that support heaven (justice and mercy), it
rather sits upon those two footstools of hell, wrong and cruelty. He is
a judge's slave, and a prisoner's his. In this they differ; he is a
voluntary one, the other compelled. He is the hangman of the law with a
lame hand, and if the law gave him all his limbs perfect he would strike
those on whom he is glad to fawn. In fighting against a debtor he is a
creditor's second, but observes not the laws of the _duello_; his play
is foul, and on all base advantages. His conscience and his shackles
hang up together, and are made very near of the same metal, saving that
the one is harder than the other and hath one property above iron, for
that never melts. He distils money out of the poor men's tears, and
grows fat by their curses. No man coming to the practical part of hell
can discharge it better, because here he does nothing but study the
theory of it. His house is the picture of hell in little, and the
original of the letters patent of his office stands exemplified there. A
chamber of lousy beds is better worth to him than the best acre of
corn-land in England. Two things are hard to him (nay, almost
impossible), viz., to save all his prisoners that none ever escape, and
to be saved himself. His ears are stopped to the cries of others, and
God's to his; and good reason, for lay the life of a man in one scale
and his fees on the other, he will lose the first to find the second. He
must look for no mercy if he desires justice to be done to him, for he
shows none; and I think he cares the less, because he knows heaven