hension of absconded culprits, strayed
apprentices, bankrupts who have conveyed away their effects, debtors
that have run away from their bail. I observe, that in exact
proportion to the indignity with which the prosecutor, who is
commonly the framer of the advertisement, conceives he has been
treated, the personal pretensions of the fugitive are denied, and his
defects exaggerated.

A fellow whose misdeeds have been directed against the public in
general, and in whose delinquency no individual shall feel himself
particularly interested, generally meets with fair usage. A coiner or
a smuggler shall get off tolerably well. His beauty, if he has any,
is not much underrated, his deformities are not much magnified. A
runaway apprentice, who excites perhaps the next least degree of
spleen in his prosecutor, generally escapes with a pair of bandy
legs; if he has taken anything with him in his flight, a hitch in his
gait is generally superadded. A bankrupt, who has been guilty of
withdrawing his effects, if his case be not very atrocious, commonly
meets with mild usage. But a debtor, who has left his bail in
jeopardy, is sure to be described in characters of unmingled
deformity. Here the personal feelings of the bail, which may be
allowed to be somewhat poignant, are admitted to interfere; and, as
wrath and revenge commonly strike in the dark, the colors are laid on
with a grossness which I am convinced must often defeat its own
purpose. The fish that casts an inky cloud about him that his enemies
may not find him, cannot more obscure himself by that device than the
blackening representations of these angry advertisers must inevitably
serve to cloak and screen the persons of those who have injured them
from detection. I have before me at this moment one of these bills,
which runs thus:--

"FIFTY POUNDS REWARD.

"Run away from his bail, John Tomkins, formerly resident in Princes
Street, Soho, but lately of Clerkenwell. Whoever shall apprehend, or
cause to be apprehended and lodged in one of his Majesty's jails, the
said John Tomkins, shall receive the above reward. He is a thick-set,
sturdy man, about five foot six inches high, halts in his left leg,
with a stoop in his gait, with coarse red hair, nose short and cocked
up, with little gray eyes, (one of them bears the effect of a blow
which he has lately received,) with a pot-belly; speaks with a thick
and disagreeable voice; goes shabbily drest; had on when he went away
a