It is stated that a successful burglar, who escaped with-
out detection, has, after four years' use of his spoil, made restitution of it to the person robbed,—Mr. Gibbons, an extensive agriculturist and corn-dealer, near Alton,— -with interest at the rate of 15 per cent. per annum. The burglar, whoever he was, took the money, according to his own account of the matter, to Australia, invested it well, and now is able to make restitution of the forced loan, which he accompanies with an entreaty for pardon for a crime com- mitted in a moment of desperation. We are not sure that the publication of the story was very wise ; not that it is likely to encourage people to wink at burglaries, as though they might turn out an unusually good species of investment—better even than Egyptian bonds, — for burglaries of this type are hardly to be expected. But it may encourage miserable people whose characters are just on the turn, to commit burglaries, in the hope of bringing them to as successful an issue, moral as well as physical, as this. No one is more sanguine than a man who is going wrong, that his single act of wrong-doing will enable him to pull himself together, and go right for evermore. And a single apparent precedent will make such men more sanguine than ever. What they ought really to be struck with, is the almost unprecedented character of such a precedent. If recoveries of this kind were not all but beyond the bounds of possibility, we should hear of them often enough. The resolve to make such restitution is certainly com- mon enough, in the beginning of criminal careers.
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