The avenues for escape are so various, and the methods of communication (aside from telegraph lines) so uncertain and infrequent, that the most wary police force is not seldom put to its wit’s end. In the country districts a young thief or burglar can obtain considerable practice in his profession before there is stir enough to prompt to his arrest. If a hen roost or garden or orchard is robbed, the owner prefers to put up with his loss, rather than be at the trouble to ferret out the rogue, and after all be defeated. The manufacturer or trader who is defrauded by a dishonest clerk, quietly dismisses the offender, and leaves it for his next employer to find out the lad’s character for himself. The course of reasoning is substantially this: The rogue will never have a chance to play his game with me again. Perhaps this disclosure of his criminal propensities may be the means of inducing him to reform; I do not wish to be the instrument of blasting his character and prospects, and bringing distress and reproach on his innocent family. Besides, I have not much faith in imprisonment as a means of reformation or discipline. So, on the whole, I will pocket my loss and send the culprit to seek his fortune--by hook or by crook, as he lists. Many a finished rogue is indebted for his proficiency in crime to this humane-looking selfishness or morbid benevolence. It is probably this general indisposition in private individuals to incur the risk and trouble of prosecuting offences, that has led to the establishment of associations for the purpose--such as societies for the detection and prosecution of horse-thieves, counterfeiters, &c., of which there are said to be not less than five hundred in the counties of England and Wales. It has been said that the existence of such societies is a proof that the State has abdicated its functions in this respect, and that posterity will refer to them as evidence of the imperfection of our present social condition, and of the misconception on the part of the State of its primary duties. But suppose a culprit is detected and prosecuted, what is the probability of his conviction. We have not the means to determine what it is in the United States, but out of 26,813 persons committed for trial in England in 1850, 6,238, or about one in four escaped conviction! Indeed, the number _acquitted_ by the verdict of a jury in 1850, exceeded the whole number _committed_ in 1810. The proportion of acquittals is probably far greater in our country.