rk, if we attribute one-eighth of the robberies committed in large
cities, to the police, or perpetrated with their connivance. Many, we
hesitate not to say, are done by men whom the public believe to be in
prison. It has become a proverb, "Set a thief to catch a thief," and
the public seem to have acquiesced that thus it shall ever be. There is
an allowed and constant connection between the criminal and the officer
engaged in suppressing crime, but whether it be necessary and
unavoidable, or the best disposition possible, deserves some
consideration. The hangman is in general only a little more fortunate
than his culprit. The leader of a band of Regulators is commonly more
ferocious, and as lawless as the victim against whom his fury is
directed. The lawyer unscrupulously pockets a fee, which he knows has
been obtained by the plunder of the citizen. Not a few of them hang
about our jails, prying into the means of the prisoners, and divide with
them the spoil, sheltering themselves from communicating any disclosures
they make under their judicial privileges. But if justice be the end of
the law, why should the communications of a prisoner to his counsel be
held sacred? If the case be undefensible otherwise, why should it be
defended, unless it be to give a fee to the lawyer, at the expense of
justice? With all deference to the legislators of our country, and to
the gentlemen of the legal profession, this seems a privilege not to be
envied: to _know_ that you are assisting to defraud, but debarred by
custom from disclosing it; to know that the culprit is guilty, and
deserves punishment or restraint, but to send him forth again upon
society to commit further crime.

Our readers may be anxious to know what became of the other two
brothers, the fourth and fifth. At this moment we believe they are both
in the State Prison. Now how was the ruin of this once respectable
family accomplished? Why did the fate of the elder not deter the
younger from crime? Were they merely drawn along by the contagion of
ill-example, or were there more potent influences at work in their
destruction? And why did punishment and penitentiaries do so little in
their reformation? The greater part of their lives were passed within
their walls, cut off from the influence of evil, but we see no sanitory
effect. We will not answer these questions directly, but in the course
of this work will supply the reader with materials to answer them for
himself. We