So it is related of Sir Walter Scott, that, when he was a boy at school, he got within one of the head of his class. But the boy at the head never made a mistake, and so he stood there, as perseveringly as the letter A stands at the head of the alphabet. But Sir Walter observed that, when his classmate was reciting, his fingers always fumbled with a button on his jacket, and, watching his opportunity at their next romping on the playground, he cut off the button from his rival’s jacket; and, at the very next lesson, the boy, being disconcerted at not finding the button, missed his answer, and Sir Walter rose to the head. But surely this was not stealing. The reason why, in each of these cases, one would not be guilty of stealing, is, that he does not mean to make the article taken his own. He gets a temporary advantage from it, but does no act that proves a design of permanent or unlimited ownership. Hence there is the broadest and most striking difference between stealing and malicious mischief. If one man takes the property of another, merely to destroy or annihilate it, out of ill will or revenge towards the owner, this is malicious mischief only, and not stealing. It is not punished as stealing. Morally, it may be as wrong,--perhaps worse than stealing itself. But this impulse which prompts to the _destruction_ of another man’s property is vastly weaker than that which leads to its _appropriation_. The latter is gratified a thousand times where the former is once, and therefore the law visits the former with the milder penalty. If taking property from its owner from revenge, and for the malicious purpose of destroying it, be not stealing, but only malicious mischief, then surely taking the property for the benevolent purpose of doing a kindness to the property itself,--as to a slave,--is not stealing.