his own views regarding the moral
effect of the pictures of vice and degradation which his works contain,
and that account is a striking statement of contemporary feeling upon
the subject:

The same principle by which we rejoice at the remuneration of
merit, will teach us to relish the disgrace and discomfiture of
vice, which is always an example of extensive use and influence,
because it leaves a deep impression of terror upon the minds of
those who were not confirmed in the pursuit of morality and virtue,
and, while the balance wavers, enables the right scale to
preponderate. * * * The impulses of fear, which is the most violent
and interesting of all the passions, remain longer than any other
upon the memory; and for one that is allured to virtue by the
contemplation of that peace and happiness which it bestows, an
hundred are deterred from the practice of vice, by the infamy and
punishment to which it is liable from the laws and regulations of
mankind. Let me not, therefore, be condemned for having chosen my
principal character from the purlieus of treachery and fraud, when
I declare that my purpose is to set him up as a beacon for the
benefit of the inexperienced and the unwary, who, from the perusal
of these memoirs, may learn to avoid the manifold snares with which
they are continually surrounded in the paths of life; while those
who hesitate on the brink of iniquity may he terrified from
plunging into that irremediable gulph, by surveying the deplorable
fate of Ferdinand Count Fathom.[181]

This passage illustrates with remarkable fidelity the attitude, not
only of Smollett, but of the other novelists and the general public of
the first half of the eighteenth century, toward vice and crime. The
consciousness of evil and the desire for reformation were prominent
features of the time. But to deter men from wrong-doing, fear was the
only recognized agent. There was absolutely no feeling of philanthropy.
There was no effort to prevent crime through the education or
regulation of the lower classes; there was no attempt to reform the
criminal when convicted. The public fear of the criminal classes was
expressed in the cruel and ineffective code which punished almost every
offense with death. The corruptions which pervaded the administration
of justice made it almost impossible to punish the wealthy and
influential. When Smollett dec