This man had for years exercised absolute sway over Rogueland. He instructed the young in the various branches of the criminal's horrid trade: he led them on from pocket-picking to stealing from stalls and bulkheads: to shop-lifting; to burglary; to robbery in the street: to forgery: to coining and issuing false coin: to highway robbery and, at times, to murder. 'Twas the most accomplished and the most desperate villain that ever lived--I cannot believe that his like was ever known. No one dared to cross him or to refuse his orders. If anyone should be so presumptuous, he speedily repented in Newgate under a capital charge followed by a capital sentence. There are so many ways of getting hanged, and so few outside the law know what offences may be capital and what are not, that there was never any certainty in the mind of the smallest rogue that he was safe from such a charge. Children of fourteen on his information were hung as well as grown men: little girls of fourteen were hung on his information as well as grown women: for shop-lifting, for lifting linen from the hedge--why this devil incarnate would instigate a child to commit a capital offence and then give him into custody for the reward, careless whether the child was hanged or not. It was a terrible end that he met with. I read sometimes of dreadful punishments: of tortures and agonies: yet I cannot picture to myself a punishment more awful than to stand up before an infuriated and implacable mob; to look down upon thousands of faces and to see no gleam of relenting upon one: not one with a tear of pity: to hear their yells of execration: to see their arms springing up with one consent----Poor wretch! Poor wretch! These people knew very well that Mr. Merridew could hang them all: that, in course of time, he would hang them all; and that, if they offended him, he would hang them all at once. It was a terrible weapon for one man to wield: nor can I believe that the laws of the land intended that any one man should be able to wield such a weapon. Why they allowed him to exist I know not--seeing their insensibility to crime, one would think that they would have murdered him long before. From wives he had taken their husbands; from mothers their sons; from girls their sweethearts: he had taken their wives and their mistresses from the men; he had taken the boys--one cannot say the innocent boys--from their playfellows; and he had hanged them all. It would be interesting to know how many he had hanged, this murderous, blood-stained villain, whose heart was like the nether millstone for hardness.