bakers' shops to see that the bread was proper weight. She
weighed her town loaf against her country loaf, and found the latter
two pounds lighter than it ought to be. This was not the sort of
grievance to carry to Sir John; but luckily the squire was also a
magistrate, and it was quite in his way; for though he would not
give, yet he would counsel, calculate, contrive, reprimand, and
punish. He told her he could remedy the evil if some one would lodge
an information against her baker; but that there was no act of
justice which he found it so difficult to accomplish.

THE INFORMER.

She dropped in on the blacksmith. He was at dinner. She inquired if
his bread was good. "Ay, good enough, mistress; for you see it is as
white as your cap, if we had but more of it. Here's a sixpenny loaf;
you might take it for a penny roll!" He then heartily cursed Crib
the baker, and said he ought to be hanged. Mrs. Jones now told him
what she had done; how she had detected the fraud, and assured him
the evil should be redressed on the morrow, provided he would appear
and inform. "I inform," said he, with a shocking oath, "hang an
informer! I scorn the office." "You are nice in the wrong place,"
replied Mrs. Jones; "for you don't scorn to abuse the baker, nor to
be in a passion, nor to swear, though you scorn to redress a public
injury, and to increase your children's bread. Let me tell you
there's nothing in which you ignorant people mistake more than in
your notions about _informers_. Informing is a lawful way of
obtaining redress; and though it is a mischievous and a hateful
thing to go to a justice about every trifling matter, yet laying an
information on important occasions, without malice, or bitterness of
any kind, is what no honest man ought to be ashamed of. The shame is
to commit the offense, not to inform against it. I, for my part,
should perhaps do right, if I not only informed against Crib, for
making light bread, but against you, for swearing at him."

"Well, but madam," said the smith, a little softened, "don't you
think it a sin and a shame to turn informer?" "So far from it, that
when a man's motives are good," said Mrs. Jones, "and in clear cases
as the present, I think it a duty and a virtue. If it is right that
there should be laws, it must be right that they should be put in
execution; but how can this be, if people will not inform the
magistrates when they see the laws broken? I hope I shall always be
afraid to