If bribes and persuasions will not do, the prosecutors are either intimidated by the expence,[8] or softened down by appeals to their humanity; and under such circumstances, they neither employ counsel nor take the necessary steps to bring forward evidence: the result is, that the Bill is either returned _ignoramus_ by the Grand Jury; or, if a trial takes place, under all the disadvantages of a deficient evidence, without a counsel for the prosecution, an advocate is heard for the prisoner, availing himself of every trifling inaccuracy which may screen his client from the punishment of the Law, the hardened villain is acquitted and escapes justice: while, as we before noticed, the novice in crimes, unskilled in the deficiencies of the Law, and unable, from the want of criminal connections, or that support which the professed thief receives from the Buyers of stolen goods, to procure the aid of counsel to defend him, _is often convicted_! [Footnote 8: No hardship can be so great as that of subjecting an individual, under any circumstance whatsoever, to the expence of a public prosecution, carried on in behalf of the King: Besides adding, almost on every occasion, to the loss of the parties, it is productive of infinite mischief, in defeating the ends of Justice.] The Registers of the Old Bailey afford a lamentable proof of the evils arising from the present mode of trying criminals without a public Prosecutor for the Crown.--In the course of seven years, previous to the Police Establishment, no less than 4262 prisoners, who had been actually put upon their trial by the Grand Jury, were let loose upon the Public by acquittals. Since that period no material diminution has taken place, except what may be easily accounted for by the war; and when to this dreadful Catalogue of Human Depravity, is to be added, the vast number of criminals who are periodically discharged from the different gaols by proclamation, and of cheats, swindlers, gamblers, and others, who have never yet been discovered or known, we may state with certainty that there are at this time _many thousand_ individuals, male and female, prowling about in this Metropolis, who principally support themselves by various depredations on the Public. Nor does the evil rest here; for even convicted felons, in too many instances, find means to escape without punishment; and to join that phalanx of villains, who are constantly engaged in objects of depredation and mischief.