LECTURE XX.

STOP THIEF!

"THOU shalt not steal" is one of the great commandments of the law, and a commandment the righteousness of which few, if any, are prepared to dispute. Theft, whether on a large scale or a small, whether perpetrated secretly or openly and with force and violence, is almost universally regarded as in a high degree criminal; and to call a man a thief, is one of the most intolerable insults you can offer him. Yet, though the criminality of theft is so widely recognised, and though the name of thief is so generally abhorred, few crimes are so common; probably there is no commandment of the law more frequently broken and set at nought than this, "Thou shalt not steal." When we reflect upon the subject, we find that there are very many thieves in the world, and very many different ways of violating this great and most equitable law.

Of those who are thieves by profession, the burglars, the card-sharpers, the begging impostors, the swindlers, the pickpockets, and the swell-mob generally, I shall say but little. One has but a small chance of addressing to

I can only express the

such people a word of advice. hope that, sooner or later, but the sooner the better, their conscience, or, if they have no conscience, their experience, may convince them that "the way of transgressors is hard," that dishonest practices are more laborious than a life of honest industry; and above all I wish that they may learn, from the example of that penitent thief who died upon the cross, that even they, suspected, watched, hunted, and hated as they are, have a friend in Him who so freely forgave that malefactor, and addressed to him those consolatory words, "Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." Far be it from me to apologise for professional rogues; but in many cases they are not so heavily responsible as most men suppose. In many cases they have been trained in roguery; in many more they have been driven to it, as the only way of keeping their bodies and souls together. Such thieves, thieves almost by necessity, must be punished; but they ought to be pitied, too, and, by judicious treatment in reformatories, many of the more juvenile of them may be, and undoubtedly will be, reclaimed, and become honest men and useful citi

zens.

But those poor wretches commonly called thieves are not the only violators of the law, "Thou shalt not steal." This law has often been broken by the most exalted personages in the world. There have been many royal, many imperial thieves and robbers. Give conquest its right name, and you must often call it robbery; and the history of nations is in a great degree the history of colossal theft and wholesale plunder. Further, in the

waste and extravagance with which the various departments of the public service are carried on, at the expense of the people, we see this law constantly violated. The Financial Reform Association is too polite to say in the plainest terms exactly what it means; but its meaning is this, and its motto might very properly be this-"Stop thief!" Only consider how the public money is squandered, how much of it is laid out in a useless manner, and not for the benefit of the country, and then say whether governments, whatever be their politics, have not need to learn this great commandment, "Thou shalt not steal."

In looking through society with a view to detecting thieves, I must admit that I find some in the clerical profession. In cunning, in audacity, and in extent, clerical knavery will stand comparison with knavery of any other sort that the world has ever seen. The artful dodges and subtle devices by means of which priests have appealed to the hopes and fears of superstitious people, and have supplied their Reverences, Right Reverences, Excellencies, and Holinesses with almost unlimited sums of money, are as numerous and ingenious as the tricks of the most accomplished members of the swell-mob; so that our Saviour's words have, in very many cases, been as applicable to the so-called Christian Church as to the Jewish Temple. "It is written, my

house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have

made it a den of thieves."

There are clerical thefts of a less culpable character than those impositions of priestcraft which have become so notorious, and which have done more than anything

else to make sceptics, and to bring the name of religion into disrepute. It seems to me little less than theft when a minister of religion takes another man's sermon and preaches it as his own, or takes parts of another man's productions without making any suitable acknowledgment. Probably enough the borrowed sermon is far better than the borrower could himself compose; it may be a great mercy to the congregation that the minister does borrow; but still, he who adopts this practice, and it is a very common one, is fairly chargeable with theft and imposture, and it would only serve him right if any member of the congregation, who happened to detect the prig in the parson, were to stand up in the hearing of the whole assembly and address the reverend drone in these brief but significant terms, "Stop thief!" The latest instance of clerical thievery that I have heard of, and the worst, is of a very curious character, and has been perpetrated with the sanction of the person who claims to be the head and chief of the Christian world. A Jewish child has been stolen from his parents; some water, I believe, was sprinkled upon his little face he was thus manufactured into a little Christian, and his Holiness, or rather, as I should in this case say, his Wickedness, has declared that he cannot be restored to his father and mother. Such, I understand, are the facts of the case. If I am in error I shall be happy to be set right; but if the case be as reported, then I would put it to any intelligent and right-hearted member of the Church of Rome whether this is not a plain case of theft? whether there is any pickpocket, burglar, highwayman, or other vulgar rascal who is guilty of such in

fernal scoundrelism as this? The man who steals, or sanctions the stealing of another man's child, deserves to be dealt with more severely than any common thief, and for this his Holiness deserves, at the very least, to be hooted and pelted through the streets of Rome; saluted everywhere with the enquiry, "Who stole the child?" If any one chooses to charge me with bigotry because I speak thus, he is perfectly welcome to make such a charge. If it be bigotry to defend the sacred right of parents, of all but inhuman parents, to have their children in their own keeping, I am a bigot; if it be bigotry to protest against a proselytism which dares to violate the sanctuary of a man's home, and to drag his little ones away from his parental embrace, I am a bigot; if it be bigotry to execrate, in the very strongest terms that language can supply, a system of kidnapping which hypocritically assumes the garb of religion, and pretends a concern for the salvation of the souls of those kidnapped, then I have to say, that in such bigotry I glory. If this theft had been committed by some protestant minister, and sanctioned by some protestant prelate, I should use language just as strong as that which I now employ. I do not speak as a bigoted protestant; I speak as a man, I speak as a father, I speak as a sworn enemy to theft and scoundrelism, and as one who hates theft and scoundrelism more and more when they are perpetrated in the name of religion; for, as an old proverb says, "there is no rogue like the godly rogue."

Perhaps I ought to include among the clerical thieves those lowest of all rascals, the agents of the Mormon imposture we cannot dignify them with the name of cler