Some of the volumes of interesting records which are preserved here would probably doubtless confirm this {280} view. Let us refer to one only, where a nobleman residing in London had engaged a butler who went to him with a very excellent character, and in whom he had the greatest confidence. Happening to have occasion to employ a detective constable on some business, his lordship was dismayed at receiving from that astute officer the intelligence that his trusted servant had once been sentenced to five years' penal servitude for some dishonest act, but had been liberated on a ticket-of-leave. Puzzled how to proceed, the nobleman had the good sense to apply for advice to this Society, where it was discovered that the representation of the detective was true enough, and that the man had been recommended to a situation by the Society itself, an intimation of his antecedents being given to the employer. In that situation he had remained for several months, without the least fault being brought against him, and he then applied for and obtained the vacant and more lucrative appointment in the family of his lordship, who, though he acknowledged he should not have engaged him had he known of his previous fault and its punishment, kept his secret, and retained him in his service, where he remained at the time of the last report, respected by the household, and faithfully fulfilling his duties. Probably this was one of those cases where, yielding to sudden temptation, a man incurs for a single crime punishment that awakens moral resolution; and it must be remembered that there are many convicts who, while in prison they are practically undistinguished from the habitual or the repeated criminal, or from the convict of brutalised, undeveloped, or feeble moral nature, are in danger of being utterly ruined because of a single and perhaps altogether unpremeditated offence, of which {281} they may bitterly repent. The feeling of shame, of humiliation, of doubt as to any but a cold and deterrent reception by former friends, the dread of scorn, derision, or abhorrence, may lead such men or women to abandon as hopeless any expectation of resuming their former avocations, or even of once more attaining a respectable position. To such as these the Society offers such aid as may keep them from the despondency that destroys; and in every case, even in that of the wretch who has been convicted again and again, it holds out some hope of reformation. That there is some such hope may be learned from the fact, that even thieves—"habitual criminals"—do not, as a rule, bring their own children up to dishonesty, and are often careful to conceal from them the means by which they live. The ranks of crime are not so largely augmented from the children of dishonest parents (though, of course, evil example bears its dreadful results) as from the neglected children of our great towns.