Page:The Scourge - Volume 5.djvu/17
His flight from Macclesfield.
It is not to be imputed to him as a fault that he forsook after having embraced for many years the Wesleyan faith and sought communion with the Unitarians. If he was chiefly induced so to do by a well-grounded conviction that their tenets were more agreeable to the Most High, he was right. But in taking leave of Macclesfield, till then the place of his observations, and even of Ms. actions; if he did induce an eminent solicitor to follow him to London in the stagecoach, and threaten the severest penalties of the law, it was to his good fortune that he was indebted for escape. The solicitor believed his promise of amendment sincere; he thought a lesson of forbearance might work reformation, and he rejoiced that in commuting the punishment of crime, for the pleasure of restoring, till then, a lost man to the bosom of society, was an action which in the eye of mercy would be acceptable and beneficial.
He thought wrong; for the crime which introduced him to the acquaintance and the friendship of the sect of Unitarians, was but the precursor of a continuance in error. It is true, with that cupidity which cunning and depraved men at all times look danger in the face, he conceived that the deprivation of personal liberty, unattended with the loss of life, was not so disgraceful as the latter alternative. To become honest was not congenial with his nature. To prey upon the credulity and the generosity of mankind was to him the most desirable mode of acting. A moment's reflection, however, might have taught him that there is more real satisfaction to be derived in the possession of a clear and upright conscience than ail the worldly goods which he could obtain by fraud, or artifice can possibly bestow.
A desire, however, to live profusely, led him to the commission of frauds, which have now humbled him into the dust. It would be a waste of time to describe all his crimes. A few of them only we shall select. Notoriety he considered as the stepping-stone to the attainment of his wishes; and this opinion it was most undoubtedly which seated him at the table of a public