Bentham imagined, that were all the methods employed by thieves and rogues described and collected together, such a compilation of their artifices and villanies would serve to put us on our guard.  The theorist of legislation seems often to forget the metaphysical state of man.  With the vitiated mind, that latent sympathy of evil which might never have been called forth but by the occasion, has often evinced how too close an inspection of crime may grow into criminality itself.  Hence it is, that when some monstrous and unusual crime has been revealed to the public, it rarely passes without a sad repetition.  A link in the chain of the intellect is struck, and a crime is perpetrated which else had not occurred.

Listen to the counsels which one of the livery gives a brother, more stupid but more innocent than himself.  I take the passage from that extraordinary Spanish comedy, in twenty-five acts, the Spanish Bawd.  It was no doubt designed to expose the arts and selfishness of the domestic, yet we should regret that the Spanish Bawd was as generally read by servants as Swift’s “Directions":—­

“Serve not your master with this foolish loyalty and ignorant honesty, thinking to find firmness on a false foundation, as most of these masters now-a-days are.  Gain friends, which is a during and lasting commodity; live not on hopes, relying on the vain promises of masters.  The masters love more themselves than their servants, nor do they amiss; and the like love ought servants to bear to themselves.  Liberality was lost long ago—­ rewards are grown out of date.  Every one is now for himself, and makes the best he can of his servant’s service, serving his turn, and therefore they ought to do the same, for they are less in substance.  Thy master is one who befools his servants, and wears them out to the very stumps, looking for much service at their hands.  Thy master cannot be thy friend, such difference is there of estate and condition between you two.”

This passage, written two centuries ago, would find an echo of its sentiments in many a modern domestic.  These notions are sacred traditions among the livery.  We may trace them from Terence and Plautus, as well as Swift and Mandeville.  Our latter great cynic has left a frightful picture of the state of the domestics, when it seems “they had experienced professors among them, who could instruct the graduates in iniquity seven hundred illiberal arts how to cheat, impose upon, and find out the blind side of their masters.”  The footmen, in Mandeville’s day, had entered into a society together, and made laws to regulate their wages, and not to carry burdens above two or three pounds weight, and a common fund was provided to maintain any suit at law against any rebellious master.  This seems to be a confederacy which is by no means dissolved.