One after another the detective arrests the pickpockets quietly, and sends them away. None of them whom he has ever seen escapes him, however much disguised. But there may be some new ones, some lately arrived from London (the fruitful mother and skillful educator of this enterprising class of our fellow-men), or from somewhere else, whom the detective has never seen, and who have passed in. But pickpockets have a brotherhood of their own, and the stranger pickpockets find their way to the resident ones at once; so to keep watch on a strange one who may possibly have entered, the detective, perhaps, allows one or two of the resident gentlemen to go in, and makes them responsible for whatever watches or pocket-books may be lost there on the given night.
The pickpockets so admitted plight him their word that they will not "work" there that night, and they keep it; and if some other pickpocket, still a stranger to the detective, carries on his business there, the resident pickpockets are sorely grieved, for they feel that their honor has been trifled with and imperilled, and they are sure to hunt out the stranger gentlemen, and make him disgorge, on the principle of the honor and respect which one member of their fraternity is bound to show to another. A higher law rules among these people than among the regular or legalized pickpockets in the business world generally. Thus, by wise stratagem, the detective causes one villain to keep another "honest," or inoffensive at least.
This particular officer is not always at that given post on play nights; but he may be often seen there, and he is a splendid specimen of the genus detective. It would be difficult to find in any business vocation a more thoroughly effective and true man than he; but he honors the calling, and not the calling him. Without him and his fellow-detectives the civilization of New York could not be maintained, and throughout the country a sort of anarchy would bear sway. Vigilance committees would be needed in all our cities, and be made up of inexperienced citizens, who, not knowing what to do, would make confusion more confounded, and run riot themselves at last. But the skilled "vigilance committee," the educated detectives, keep things in order.
On the whole, I am of the opinion that the detective system, with all its crafts and hypocrisies, its "higher law," or law of "expediences," which is constantly breaking in upon common law and the statute law of the States against the compounding of felonies, etc., etc., is, notwithstanding all that may be said against it, one of the very best institutions or features of our corrupt civilization, whether we regard the physical powers or the spiritual powers that be in its midst. It is, at least, the silent, secret, and effective Avenger of the outraged Majesty of the Law when everything else fails, and must fail, to bring certain irregular members of society into order. And if there is any merit in sustaining our corrupt, abominable civilization as it is, then the detective's value cannot well be overrated. But there are social philosophers who hold that it is a sin to perpetuate things as they are, and who teach that society can never be reformed, and justice rule, protecting the rights of labor against the rapacity of greedy tyrants, etc., etc., until it shall have first become disintegrated in all its present parts, and be reconstructed; that out of the rotten particulars of which the general whole is now composed nothing worthy can be wrought; and that disintegration cannot come too soon, even if through all possible calamities. In the view of these men the detective system is but a power exercised in an unholy cause; a necessary part of an unnecessary system of wrong. Between the philosophers and the general public I leave the detective system, unwilling to assume to decide for others whether, on the whole, it fell from "heaven" or sprang from "hell."
But while I would not undertake to determine for others the metaphysical (?) question above raised, I feel it proper to add for myself, that although most of my relations with the police during my whole period of office were pleasant enough, so far as my brother officers were concerned (some of whom, indeed, I hold in cordial esteem); yet the duties of my position were frequently obnoxious to my taste and—perhaps I will be pardoned for so expressing myself—to my better nature. My adoption of and continuance in the profession were not acts of choice, or volition, in the sense of what sundry more or less clear-headed theologians call "free agency"; but, rather, the practical expressions or verifications of "foreordination" perhaps, or in other words, the results of the "force of circumstances," in conflict with which I was powerless; and I felt relieved of a great burden when fate permitted me, at last, to forego my honors as a detective policeman.
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