In an undertaking so truly laudable and beneficial to the lives, liberties, and property of your fellow citizens and subjects, you cannot doubt the assistance of every friend to justice. Experience has furnished me with a plentiful stock of such materials most necessary to lay the foundation and ground-work of your intended plan, and I shall most cheerfully transfer them when called on. Though notwithstanding such assistance, joined to your own unparalleled intrepidity, sagacity, and acquaintance with the laws, I fear the talk of reformation will prove too arduous for your single efforts. That you may form a more perfect idea of the difficulties you have to encounter, I shall set before your view the rise, progress, abilities, strength, and preposterous magnitude of a modern sheriff’s officer. This excrement of the law is in general the outcast of bagnios and more infamous brothels, or the vomit of every gaol within the bills of mortality; if he can boast a seven years tour to America, it is an acquisition to his pretentions. Let this be as it may, certain it is, that they most carefully unload themselves of every tender sensation and feeling incident to human nature to render their conscience light enough for a thorough bailiff. Bawdy-house keepers, or other persons of equal reputation, find it their interest to stand security to the sheriffs, the clerks in whole office, after receiving the necessary perquisite and treat, admit him to the vocation of his profession; being thus constituted a minister of justice _durante bene placito_, and having been regularly initiated in the principles of thieving from his cradle, he begins the plundering trade, as if licensed pursuant to act of parliament, under the cherishing wings of the law, provided with the annexed indispensible implements of his profession; viz. ten of his primitive companions, by way of a _corps de reserve_, when on the forlorn hope, {7} a thorough-paced pettyfogging attorney, an infamous broker, whose conscience exceeds not the price of a rush chair, and _a very reputable_, _worthy_, monied-man, whose successful VILLANIES have enabled him to advance a sum on every occasion that offers a VICTIM to his _Friendship_. The diabolical band of this demi-pluto being thus arraigned, and his houshold established under the inspection of a female with principles of the same dimension, the inquisition opens, and the tortures begin on the first unhappy object that falls in their clutches, who is no sooner brought home (as the phrase is) but surrounded by this flock of harpies. The attorney attends in capacity of midwife to his misfortunes, and most carefully delivers him of all his secrets, such as, how much property he is possessed of, how much he owes, and many other particulars very material to him; the bottle is pushed briskly about, and the prisoner is made to believe he is amongst his best friends. The first and principal point is gained when they have prevailed on him not