Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux/Volume 1/Advertisement
ADVERTISEMENT.
IT has been thought that the Public would benefit in more ways than one, by the publication of a work, in which the philosopher may read the workings of an unprincipled conscience, the legislator be let into the operations of the laws upon the criminal's mind, and the citizen derive a key to the frauds by which he is so easily and constantly beset; and it is not often that thieves are possessed of sufficient truth, memory, vanity, and literature, to tell the story of their own lives. It will be seen that Mr. Vaux, together with an excellent memory, possesses a good share of vanity, and sufficient literature. In the following pages, the former (I think) often magnifies the latter, particularly in the account of the author's readership at the printing-office; but it is only justice to him to say, that I have found occasion to make very few alterations in his manuscript, which came to my hands ready prefaced and dedicated, and chaptered, as if ripe for his old master's printing-office—that it was exceedingly well and fairly transcribed; and, (with one or two exceptions) correctly spelled and punctuated.
When Mr. Vaux's predilection for low company comes to be observed, the reader will justly doubt the great liberality of education and taste for reading, upon which he so often vaunts himself. The quotations in his narrative are all common-place; and I have struck out a few as profaned by misapplication.
As for the truth of the following tale—nobody can vouch for it. I am afraid it is occasionally sacrificed at the shrine of Vanity, who seems to be the author's patron-saint. He is fonder of confessing himself guilty of frauds, from the punishment of which he escaped, than of those in which he was found out; detection (he thinks) impeaches his cunning; and though he recounts with exultation the theft for which he is now transported for life, that is, because he knows it was committed under protection of, perhaps, the most consummate address and assurance ever exhibited by man—it amounted to the sublime of impudence—and, after all, he was only betrayed into the hands of justice, who, if she had a hundred eyes, would not (it should seem) have enough to detect the dissimulations of James Hardy Vaux. The reader will observe, that he denies his guilt of the crime for which he was before transported, because it was a common, clumsy partnership picking a handkerchief out of the pocket; and so, too, he denies any confederacy with the Judge Advocate's servant, in robbing his master's writing-desk, for which offence he was further transported to Newcastle, in this territory, whither he now again is sent for life, for an attempt to escape from the country altogether. The reader must, therefore, believe as much or as little as he pleases of the following story. Of him who confesses himself a liar, the voice must necessarily be listened to with distrust.
"Look to him well; have a quick eye to see;
He has deceiv'd another, and may thee."
By the laws of all nations, he who is once detected in perjury, is not allowed to bear further witness—the testimony of a king's evidence must be corroborated—and the confession of a felon is never allowed to prove any thing against another person.
With this caveat lector, I dismiss this entertaining and instructive narrative; for so I will call it, thinking it as full of cunning and adventure as "The Life of Guzman de Alfarache—the Spanish Rogue," if not so profoundly moralized. The religion, indeed, (if it can be so called) of Mr. Vaux is, like that of most convicts, a low sort of fatalism, which may be called a fatalism after the fact. The followers of this sect do not connect predestination with "foreknowledge absolute," but merely comfort themselves with the truism, that when their misfortunes have happened, nothing can prevent them from having happened. Of "free will," they first suffer the time for the exercise to go by, and then complain of the impotency,—abandoning themselves with an insensibility, which they mistake for resignation, to what they call the predestined and inevitable decrees of "fixed fate[1]." Some of this false complaining has been expunged from the following work; but enough (I am afraid) is left to shew the delusion.
It remains only to be added, that the pecuniary profits of this publication will be applied to the relief of the author, in his perpetual banishment.
Sydney, New South Wales,
18th May, 1817.
- ↑
"Le bien, nous le faisons; le mal, c'est le sort;
"On a toujours raison, le destin toujours tort."La Fontaine.