"Come, there's a good deal of reason in all that," exclaimed the Resurrection Man. "Here, my good fellow," he added, turning to the waiter, "drink this tumbler of egg-hot for your fine speech."
The waiter did not require to be asked twice, but imbibed the smoking beverage with infinite satisfaction to himself.
"I never heard any thing more true than what that fellow has just said," observed the Resurrection Man to his companion in iniquity. "Only suppose, now, that all Saint Giles's, Clerkenwell, Bethnal Green, and the Mint were improved, as they call it, where the devil would crime take refuge?—for no one knows better than you and me that we should uncommon soon have to give up business if we hadn't dark and narrow streets to operate in, cribs like this ken to meet and plan in, and the low courts and alleys to conceal ourselves in. Lord! what indeed would London be to us if it was all like the West-End?"
"And so the fact is that the authorities very kindly leave in existence and undisturbed, those very places which give birth to you gentlemen in the first instance," said the waiter, "and sustain you afterwards."
"Well, you ain't very far wrong, old feller," exclaimed the Cracksman. "But, blow me, if this ever struck me before."
"Nor me, neither," said the Resurrection Man, "till the flunkey started the subject."
"Ah! there's a many things that has struck me since I've been in the waiter-line in flash houses of this kind," observed the paralytic attendant, shaking his head solemnly; "but one curious fact I've noticed,—which is, that in nine cases out of ten the laws themselves make men take to bad ways, and then punish them for acting under their influence."
"I don't understand that," said the Cracksman.
"I do, though," exclaimed the Resurrection Man; "and I mean to say that the flunkey is quite right. We ain't born bad: something then must have made us bad. If I had been in the Duke of Wellington's place, I should be an honourable and upright man like him; and if he had been in my place, he would be—what I am."
"Of course he would," echoed the waiter.