family, whom Tom Jones relieved from his own scanty purse, be not proof enough of the compassion that tempered Justice Fielding's sternness, we have his own express pleading for these unhappy victims of circumstance: "what can be more shocking," he cries, "than to see an industrious poor Creature, who is able and willing to labour forced by mere want into Dishonesty, and that in a Nation of such Trade and Opulence." So justly could Fielding apportion the contributary negligence of society towards the criminals bred by its apathy. And it was not only the impoverished porter who found help at Bow Street. "When," says Murphy, "in the latter end of [Mr Fielding's] days he had an income of four or five hundred a-year, he knew no use of money but to keep his table open to those who had been his friends when young, and had impaired their own fortunes." As Mr Austin Dobson says, in commenting on one of Horace Walpole's scurrilous letters, [2] "it must always have been a more or less ragged regiment which met about that kindly Bow Street board." The man who parted with his own hardly won arrears of rent to relieve the yet greater need of a College friend, was little likely to be less generous when the tardy 'jade Fortune' at last put some secured income into his hands. No special event marks the spring and summer of 1750. On the 11th of January the Westminster General Quarter Sessions opened, and on the following day Fielding was again elected as chairman "for the two next Quarter Sessions"; which election was repeated, "for the two next Sessions, [3]" in July. The Registers of St Paul's Covent Garden record the baptism of a daughter, Sophia, on the 21st of January. And an indication that the zealous magistrate was plunged, personally, into some of the tumults of the time occurs in the following trifling note to the Duke of Bedford. "My Lord, "In obedience to the Commands I have the Honour to receive from your Grace, I shall attend tomorrow morning and do the utmost in my Power to preserve the Peace on that occasion. "I am, with gratitude and Respect, "My Lord, "Your Grace's most obliged "most obedient humble servant. "Henry Ffielding. [4] "Bow Street, "May 14, 1750." By the autumn, however, a rumour was abroad that the now famous author of _Tom Jones_ was engaged on pages of a very different nature. The _General Advertiser_, for October 9, announces:-- "We hear that an eminent Magistrate is now employed in preparing a Pamphlet for the Press in which the several causes that have conspired to render Robberies so frequent of late will be laid open; the Defects of our Laws enquired into, and Methods proposed which may discourage and in a great measure prevent this growing Evil for the future."