The Life of THOMAS POLSON, alias HITCHIN, a Footpad and Highwayman

Habit is the most dangerous of all evils.  The transports of passion are sometimes prevented from having fatal effects, either by the precautions of those with whom we quarrel, or because a sudden reflection of our own minds checks our hand.  But where men have abandoned themselves to wickedness, and given themselves up to the commission of every kind of evil without restraint, there is little hope to be entertained of their ever mending; and if the fear of a sudden death work a true repentance, it is all that can be hoped.

As for this unfortunate man of whose actions the course of our memoirs obliges us to treat, he was descended from parents who lived at Marlow, in the county of Salop, who were equally honest in their reputations, and easy in their circumstances.  They spared nothing in the education of their son, and it is hard to say whether their care of him was more or his application was less.  Even while a child and at school he gave too evident symptoms of that lazy, indolent disposition which attended him so flagrantly and was justly the occasion of all the misfortunes of his succeeding life.  Learning was of all things his aversion.  It was with difficulty that he was taught to read and write.  As to employment, his father brought him up to husbandry and the business of a rural life.

When he was of age his father gave him an estate of twenty pounds per annum, freehold, and got him into a very good farm.  He procured for him also a wife, who had ten pounds a year more of her own, and settled him in such a manner that no young man in the country had a better prospect of doing well than himself.  But, alas! to what purpose are the endeavours of others, where a man studies nothing so much as to compass his own ruin?  On a sudden he took a love to card-playing, and addicted himself to it with such earnestness that he neglected his business and squandered his money.  Want was what of all things he hated, except work, and therefore rather than labour to retrieve, he bethought himself of an easier way of getting money, and that was to steal.

His first attempt was upon his father, whom he robbed of a considerable sum of money.  He not being in the least suspected, a poor maid who lived in the house bore the blame for about six months, and nobody in all that time being charged with it but her, there was at last a design in the old man’s head to prosecute her.  This reaching young Polson’s ear, he resolved not to let an innocent person suffer, which was indeed a very just and honourable act, whereupon he wrote an humble letter to his father, acknowledging his fault, begging pardon for his offences, and desiring that he would not prosecute the poor woman, or suffer her to be any longer under the odium of a fact of which she had not the least knowledge.  This, to be sure, had its effect on his father, who was a