"The principal Duty which every Man owes is to his Country." _Enquiry into the ... Increase of Robbers_. To have created the English novel were, it might seem, achievement enough to tire for a while the most vigorous of intellects; but to the author of _Tom Jones_ the apathy of repose was unknown. At no period of Fielding's short life can he be discerned as doing nothing; and, indeed, to an insight so penetrating, to an ardour so irrepressible, the England of George the Second can have afforded but very little inducement to inaction. Thus, in the one month of October 1748, the pages of _Tom Jones_ must have been nearing completion, if indeed the sheets were not already passing through the press. The Hanoverian philippics of "Mr Trott-Plaid" were still resounding in the _Jacobite's Journal_. While, on the 26th. of the month, Fielding's oaths were received for an entirely new rôle, that of a Justice of the Peace for Westminster. [1] Ten days later the _Jacobite's Journal_ had ceased to exist; and that a rumour was abroad connecting this demise of the _Journal_ with the bestowal of a new and arduous post on its editor appears from a paragraph in the _London Evening Post_. On Nov. 8, that organ prepares its readers for the fact that the now defunct "Mr Trott-Plaid" may possibly "rise awful in the Form of a Justice." Within four weeks of this announcement 'Justice Fielding's' name appears for the first time in the Police-news of the day, in a committal dated December 10th [2]. And two days later he is sending three thieves to the Gatehouse, and admitting a suspected thief to bail, "after an Examination which lasted several hours." And it is interesting to notice that throughout this first month of his magisterial work the now 'awful form' of Justice Henry Fielding was kept constantly tempered in the public mind by the fact of his still undiminished popularity as a dramatist. In this December his comedies, with the inimitable 'romp' Kitty Clive as _Miss Lucy_, or the _Intrigueing Chambermaid_ or _Chloe_, as the case might be, were played no fewer than nine times on the Drury Lane boards. Scarcely had Fielding bent his genius to these new responsibilities of examining Westminster suspects and sending the rogues of that city to prison, than he appears preparing for an extension of those duties over the county of Middlesex. To be a county magistrate in 1750, however, necessitated the holding of landed estate worth £100 per annum; and Fielding's estate, for many years, seems to have been his pen. In this difficulty he turned to the Duke of Bedford, whose public virtues, and private generosity, were so soon to be acknowledged in the Dedication of _Tom Jones_. It was but three weeks after his appointment that the Westminster magistrate wrote as follows to the giver of those "princely Benefactions": "Bow Street. Decr. 13. 1748. "My Lord,