im faithfully and followed him like dogs; but he
did not apply his theories in his treatment of them, for they were
never without the marks of his brutality. In the very presence of his
bruised and beaten slaves he talked of his own virtues, of social
inequality, of the tyranny of the rich, and he held to his belief in
his own innate goodness after he had committed depredations to the
extent of thousands of pounds, and even after he was answerable for
two murders. That man never knew himself a villain, and it was only
when the rope was gradually closing round his neck that the keen
sleuth-hound remorse found him out, and he had the grace to save an
innocent man from a living death. This monstrous hypocrite was another
typical scoundrel, and his like people every prison in the country.

The scoundrels who are called great do not usually come under the
gallows-tree, and their last dying speeches are somewhat rare; but we
may be pretty certain, from the little we know, that each one of them
fancies himself an estimable person. Ivan of Russia, the ferocious
ruler, who had men torn to pieces before his eyes, the being who had
forty thousand men, women, and children massacred in cold blood,
regarded himself as the deputy of the Supreme Being. The mad Capet,
who fired the signal which started tho massacre of St. Bartholomew,
believed that he was fulfilling the demands of goodness and orthodoxy.
The deadly inquisitors who roasted unhappy fellow mortals wholesale
believed--or pretended to believe--that they were putting their
victims through a benign ordeal. The heretic was a naughty child;
roast him, and his sin was purged; while the frosty-blooded old men
who murdered him looked to heaven and returned thanks for their own
special allowance of virtue. Conqueror and inquisitor, burglar and
murderer, forger and wife-beater, brutal sea-captain and prowling
thief--all the scoundrels go about their business with a full faith in
their own blamelessness. I do not like to class them as automata,
though the wise and genial Mr. Huxley would undoubtedly do so. What
shall we do with them? Is it fair that a wearied world and a toil-worn
society should maintain them? My own idea is that sentiment, softness,
regrets for severity should be banished, and we should say to the
scoundrel, "Attend, rascal! You say that you are wronged, and that you
are driven to harm your fellow-creatures by the force of external
circumstances; that may be so, but