[11] From the autograph now at Woburn Abbey, and printed in the _Correspondence of John, Fourth Duke of Bedford_, vol. ii. p. 35. [12] From the hitherto unpublished autograph now in the British Museum. [13] This letter is now in the Dreer Collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, U.S.A. CHAPTER XIII FIELDING AND LEGISLATION "The Subject, as well as the Child, should be left without excuse before he is punished: for, in that case alone, the Rod becomes the Hand either of the Parent or the Magistrate." _Inquiry Into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers_. There is no Bill for the suppression of street robberies on the Statute Book for 1749 or 1750; so the draft which Fielding, with characteristic energy, despatched to the Lord Chancellor but a few months after his appointment to the Bench, was, presumably, pigeon-holed. Meanwhile, the criminal conditions of the metropolis seem to have become, if anything, more scandalous. In February 1750, the _Penny Post_ reports the gaols in and about London to be "now so full of Felons and desperate Rogues that the Keepers have not fetters enow to put upon them; so that in some Prisons two or three are chained together to prevent their escape." And on the fifth of the same month the _General Advertiser_ hears that "near 40 Highwaymen, street Robbers, Burglars, Rogues, Vagabonds, and Cheats have been committed within a week last past by Justice Fielding." But however full of business the Bow Street court-room might be, that dreary routine [1] would make, as we have said, but equally dreary reading. And the fact that both John and Henry Fielding appear to have been known as 'Justice Fielding' during the lifetime of the latter, lessens whatever biographical value might be extracted from the constant newspaper paragraphs recording the Fielding cases. It is clear that the house in Bow Street was the centre of an active campaign against the thieves, murderers, professional gamblers, and highwaymen, who were then so rife. Military guards conducted thither prisoners, brought for examination from Newgate, for fear of rescue from gangs lurking in the neighbouring streets. All "Persons who have been robbed" and their servants, were desired, by public advertisement, to attend Justice Fielding "at his House in Bow Street," to identify certain prisoners under examination. And thither came the "porters and beggars," the composing of whose quarrels Henry Fielding himself has told us, occupied his days. The generous spirit in which he treated such poor clients, and his tenderness for those driven by want into crime, are eminently characteristic of the man. By adjusting, instead of inflaming, these squalid quarrels, and by "refusing to take a shilling from a man who must undoubtedly would not have had another left," he reduced a supposed income of £500 a year to £300. And if the picture of the poor wretch, driven to highway robbery by the sight of his starving