etected in
aiding the escape of a highwayman confined in Newgate, and being
deprived of his power, he was easily convicted. He was hung in 1725,
and on his way to the scaffold was almost pelted to death by the mob.

The impunity with which Wild followed his long career of crime was not
unusual. The authorities were inefficient and corrupt. Fielding,
himself a police justice, makes a magistrate say in "Amelia": "And to
speak my opinion plainly, such are the laws and such the method of
proceeding that one would almost think our laws were made for the
protection of rogues, rather than for the punishment of them." The laws
bore hardly upon the poor and spared the rich. "The parson," complained
Defoe in the "Poor Man's Plea," "preaches a thundering sermon against
drunkenness, and the justice of the peace sets my poor neighbor in the
stocks, and I am like to be much the better for either, when I know
perhaps that this same parson and this same justice were both drunk
together but the night before." The magistrates and constables were as
much in need of reform as the laws. "The greatest criminals in this
town," said Walpole,[147] "are the officers of justice; there is no
tyranny they do not exercise, no villany of which they do not partake."
Many of the magistrates were never impartial, except, as Fielding said:
"when they could get nothing on either side." One class of constables
was described by Fielding in "Amelia."[148] The watchmen intended "to
guard our streets by night from thieves and robbers, an office which at
least requires strength of body, are chosen out of those poor old
decrepit people, who are from their want of bodily strength rendered
incapable of getting a livelihood by work. These men, armed only with a
pole, which some of them are scarce able to lift, are to secure the
persons and houses of his Majesty's subjects from the attacks of young,
bold, stout, desperate, and well-armed villains. If the poor old
fellows should run away from such enemies, no one, I think, can wonder,
unless it be that they were able to make their escape." Defoe's
pickpockets are always more afraid of being mobbed on the spot, than of
being detected and punished by the police. Well known highwaymen not
infrequently rode through the streets of London with armed companions,
although large rewards were offered for their capture. Many of the
constables were of the most villanous character. The following
incident, recorded by Walpole, is