The Chief of Thieves is responsible to the government, and to him all those who steal professionally must give in their names, and must also keep him informed of their successful operations. When goods are missed, the owner applies to the government, is referred to the Chief of Thieves for the Department, and all particulars of quantity, quality, time, and manner of abstraction, to the best of his knowledge and belief, being given, the goods are easily identified and at once restored,—less a discount of twenty-five per cent. Against any rash man who should undertake a private speculation, of course the whole fraternity of thieves would be the beat possible police. This, after all, appears to be a mere compromise of police taxes. He who has no goods to lose, or, having, can watch them so well as not to need the police, the government agrees shall not be made to pay for a police; but he whom the fact of loss is against must pay well to be watched.
Something of this principle is observable in all the East The East is the fatherland of thieves, and Oriental annals teem with brilliant examples of their exploits. The story of Jacoub Ben-Laith, founder of the Soffarid dynasty,—otherwise, first of the Tinker-Kings of the larger part of Persia,—is especially excellent upon that proverbial "honor among thieves" of which most men have heard.
Working weary hour after hour in his little shop,—toiling away days, weeks, and months for a meagre subsistence,—Jacoub finally turned in disgust from his hammer and forge, and became a "minion of the moon." He is said, however, to have been reasonable in plunder, and never to have robbed any of all they had. One night he entered the palace of Darham, prince of the province of Segestan, and, working diligently, soon gathered together an immense amount of valuables, with which he was making off, when, in crossing a very dark room, his foot struck upon a hard substance, and the misstep nearly threw him down. Stooping, he picked up that upon which he had trodden. He believed it, from feeling, to be a precious stone. He carried it to his mouth, touched it with his tongue,—it was salt! And thus, by his own action, he had tasted salt beneath the prince's roof,—in Eastern parlance, had accepted his hospitality, become his guest. He could not rob him. Jacoub laid down his burden,—robes embroidered in gold upon the richest materials, sashes wanting only the light to flash with precious stones worked in the braid, all the costly and rare of an Eastern prince's palace gathered in one common spoil,—laid it all down, and departed as silently as he had come.
In the morning the disorder seen told only of attempted robbery. Diligent search being made, the officers charged with it became satisfied of Jacoub's complicity. They brought him before the prince. There, being charged with the burglary, Jacoub at once admitted it, and told the whole story. The prince, honoring him for his honor, at once took him into his service, and employed him with entire confidence in whatever of important or delicate he had to do that needed a man of truth and courage; and Jacoub from that beginning went up step by step, till he himself became prince of a province, and then of many provinces, and finally king of a mighty realm. He had soul enough, according to Carlyle's idea, not to need salt; but, for all that, the salt saved him.
Another king of Persia, Khurreem Khan, was not ashamed to admit, with a crown on his head, that he had once been a thief, and was wont to recount of himself what in these days we should call a case of conscience. Thus he told it:—
"When I was a poor soldier in Nadir Shah's camp, my necessities led me to take from a shop a gold-embossed saddle, sent thither by an Afghan chief to be repaired. I soon afterward heard that the owner of the shop was in prison, sentenced to be hanged. My conscience smote me. I restored the stolen article to the very place whence I had removed it, and watched till it was discovered by the tradesman's wife. She uttered a scream of joy, on seeing it, and fell on her knees, invoking blessings on the person who had brought it back, and praying that he might live to have a hundred such saddles. I am quite certain that the honest prayer of the old woman aided my fortune in attaining the splendor she wished me to enjoy."
These are variations upon the general theme of thievery. They all tend to show that it is, at the least, unsafe to take the fact of a man's having committed a certain crime against property as a proof per se that he is radically bad or inferior in intellect. "Your thief looks in the crowd," says Byron,
"Exactly like the rest, or rather better,"—
and this, not because physiognomy is false, but the thief's face true. Of a promiscuous crowd, taken almost anywhere, the pickpocket in it is the smartest man present, in all probability. According to Ecclesiasticus, it is "the heart of man that changeth his countenance"; and it does seem that it is to his education, and not to his heart, that man does violence in stealing. It is certainly in exact proportion to his education that he feels in reference to it, and does or does not "regret the necessity."
And, indeed, that universal doctrine of contraries may work here as elsewhere; and it might not he difficult to demonstrate that a majority of thieves are better fitted by their nature and capacity for almost any other position in life than the one they occupy through perverse circumstance and unaccountable accident. Though mostly men of fair ability, they are not generally successful. Considering the number of thieves, there are but few great ones. In this "Rogues' Gallery" of the New York Police Commissioners we find the face of a "first-rate" burglar among the ablest of the eighty of whom he is one. He is a German, and has passed twenty years in the prisons of his native land: has that leonine aspect sometimes esteemed a physiognomical attribute of the German, and, with fair enough qualities generally, is without any especial intellectual strength. Near him is another "first-rate,"—all energy and action, acute enough, a quick reasoner, very cool and resolute. Below these is the face of one whom the thief-takers think lightly of, and call a man of "no account." Yet he is a man of far better powers than either of the "first-rates,"—has more thought and equal energy,—a mind seldom or never at rest,—is one to make new combinations and follow them to results with an ardor almost enthusiastic. From some want of adaptation not depending upon intellectual power, he is inferior as a thief to his inferiors.
This man was without a cravat when his picture was taken, and his white shirt-collar, coming up high in the neck, has the appearance of a white neckerchief. This trifle of dress, with the intellectual look of the man, strikes every observer as giving him a clerical appearance. The picture strongly resembles—more in air, perhaps, than in feature—the large engraved portrait of Summerfield. There is not so much of calm comprehensiveness of thought, and there are more angles. Thief though he be, he has fair language,—not florid or rhetorical, but terse and very much to the point. If bred as a divine, he would have held his place among the "brilliants" of the time, and been as original, erratic, or outré as any. What a fortune lost! It is part of the fatality for the man not to know it, at least in time. Even villany would have put him into his proper place, but for that film over the mental vision. "If rogues," said Franklin, "knew the advantages attached to the practice of the virtues, they would become honest men from mere roguery."
Many of the faces of this Rogues' Gallery are very well worth consideration. Of a dozen leading pickpockets, who work singly, or two or three together, and are mostly English, what is first noted is not favorable to English teaching or probity;—their position sits easily upon them. There is not one that gives indication of his having passed through any mental struggle before he sat down in life as a thief. Though all men capable of thought, they have not thought very deeply upon this point. One of them is a natural aristocrat,—a man who could keep the crowd aloof by simple volition, and without offense; nothing whatever harsh in him,—polite to all, and amiable to a fault with his fellows.
There would be style in everything he did or said. He is one to astonish drawing-rooms and bewilder promenades by the taste and elegance of his dress. Upon that altar, doubtless, he sacrificed his principles; but the sacrifice was not a great one.
"'Tis only at the bar or in the dungeon that wise men know a felon by his features." Another English pickpocket appears to have Alps on Alps of difference between him and a thief. Good-nature prevails; there is a little latent fire; not enough energy to be bad, or good, against the current. He has some quiet dignity, too,—the head, in fine, of a genial, dining Dombey, if such a man can be imagined. Face
