One of the worst features of the policy under consideration is its selfishness. A chief who says to a professional thief, "I will leave you alone if you will leave me alone," practically says to him: "Go to another town when you want to steal." An amusing story is told in this connection about two chiefs who aired their different notions in regard to the matter, at one of the annual conferences of the chiefs of police. One of them had said tentatively, so the story goes, that he had heard that in some cities criminals were protected, and that he considered the practice a bad one. Another chief, who was thought to favour such a policy, got up and said that he did not know much about the question in hand, but he did know that his town was particularly free of crime. "That may be, Bill," retorted the first speaker, "but I'll tell you what your thieves do--they come down to my town to steal and go back to yours, where they are left alone, to live." I give the anecdote merely as gossip, but it illustrates splendidly one of the worst results of compromise with crime. It sometimes happens that an entire municipal administration, or, at any rate, the most powerful officials in it, favour the policy of compromise, and then it is utterly impossible to punish the criminal adequately. I have been in such communities. Not long ago I was in a town of about ten thousand inhabitants where a "mob" of New York pickpockets were caught in the act of attempting to pick a pocket. On being charged with the crime by the officers who had discovered them, they admitted their guilt and profession, and said: "But what are you going to do about it?" If the town authorities had been trustworthy the pickpockets could have been sent to the penitentiary; because there was practically no hope of securing their conviction in the local courts on account of their ability to bribe, or to give a purely nominal bail and then run away, they were let go.