just
spoken? And very many are so situated. Is it possible for them to
perform their duty, as protectors of their children? It requires all
their time to labour for their support, and they therefore leave them,
unavoidably, either in such hands as we have described, or to take
care of themselves; to range the streets, and form such associations
as may there happen to fall in their way. They get into company with
older delinquents, and become first their instruments, and then their
associates; till at length they find their way into a gaol.

This is no delusive way of accounting for the matter,--it is a
solution which experience and observation have taught and established.
I have traced the progress of delinquency, in actual life, from
its earliest stages,--from the little trembling pilferer of the
apple-stall, not more than four or five years old, to the confirmed
thief of nine or ten years--who had been in gaol three or four times,
and was as proud of his dexterity in thieving, and hardihood under
punishment, as he could have been of the most virtuous accomplishment,
or the most becoming fortitude. The infant thief, conscious of shame,
and trembling with fear, will tell you on detection, that "Tommy," or
"Billy," some older associate, set him to do it; you let him go: he
joins his companions, who laugh at the story he tells, ridicule him
for his fears, praise him for his dexterity, and rejoice in his
escape. It will be very easy to imagine how, under a course of such
treatment, the young offender so soon dismisses both shame and fear;
and learns to forget everything but the gain and glory of his crimes.

It is no small matter of credit with older thieves--(by older thieves
I still mean boys of nine or ten years old)--to have under their
tuition two or three pupils. I have seen in my walks as many as seven
or eight sallying forth from the alleys in the neighbourhood of
Spitalfields, under the command, as it were, of a leader, a boy
perhaps not more than nine or ten years old. I have watched their
plans, and have noticed that it was usual to send first the youngest
boy to attempt the theft--perhaps the object to be obtained was only
a bun from the open window of a pastry-cook's shop; if he failed,
another was sent, whilst the rest were lurking at the corner of some
court, ready to flee in case their companion was detected; and I have
sometimes seen, that after all the rest had failed, either from want
of skill, or the