hich he, like some other flagitious creatures of this
stamp, seem impatient to arrive; since no warning, no admonition, no
escape is sufficient to deter them from those crimes, which they are
sensible the laws of their country with Justice have rendered capital.

Barton's return from transportation was sufficient to have brought him
to death had he committed nothing besides; but he, whether through
necessity, as having no way left of living honestly, or from his own
evil inclinations, ventured upon his old trade, and robbing amongst
others the Lord Viscount Lisbourn, of the Kingdom of Ireland, and a lady
who was with him in the coach, of a silver hilted sword, a snuff-box and
about twelve shillings in money, he was for this fact taken, tried and
convicted at the Old Bailey.

He immediately laid by all hopes of life as soon as he had received
sentence, and with great earnestness set himself to secure that peace in
the world to come, which his own vices had hindered him from in this. He
got some good books which he read with continual devotion and attention,
submitted with the utmost patience to the miseries of his sad condition,
and finding his relations would take care of his daughter and that his
wife, for whom he never lost the most tender concern, would be in no
danger of want, he laid aside the thoughts of temporal matters
altogether expressing a readiness to die, and never showing any weakness
or impatience of the nearest approach of death.

Much of that firmness with which he behaved in these last moments of his
life might probably be owing to natural courage, of which certainly
Barton had a very large share. But the remains of virtue and religion,
to which the man had always a propensity, notwithstanding that he gave
way to passions which brought him to all the sorrows he knew, yet the
return he made, when in the shadow of death, to piety and devotion,
enabled him to suffer with great calmness, on Friday the 12th of May,
1721, aged about thirty-one years.

ROBERT PERKINS, Thief

I should never have undertaken this work without believing it might in
some degree be advantageous to the public. Young persons, and especially
those in a meaner state, are, I presume, those who will make up the
bulk of my readers, and these, too, are they who are more commonly
seduced into practices of this ignominious nature. I should therefore
think myself unpardonable if I did not take care to furnish them with
such cauti