Defoe is much more successful in teaching a moral lesson in "Colonel Jack." The aim of this novel is to describe the course of a street-boy who takes to thieving before he knows that it is not a legitimate business, and who being possessed naturally of a good character is brought to repentance and reform when subjected to better influences. Defoe's preface has great significance when we consider the deplorable condition of the lower classes and no better idea can be gained of the usual fate of the children of the poor than is afforded by this novel.
Here is room for just and copious observations on the blessings and advantages of a sober and well-governed education, and the ruin of so many thousands of all ranks in this Nation for want of it; here also we may see how much public schools and charities might be improved, to prevent the destruction of so many unhappy children, as, in this town, are every year bred up for the executioner.
The miserable condition of multitudes of youth, many of whose natural tempers are docible, and would lead them to learn the best things, rather than the worst, is truly deplorable, and is abundantly seen in the history of this man's childhood; where, though circumstances formed him by necessity to be a thief, surprising rectitude of principles remained with him, and made him early abhor the worst part of his trade, and at length to forsake the whole of it. Had he come into the world with the advantage of a virtuous education, and been instructed how to improve the generous principles he had in him, what a figure might he not have made, either as a man or a Christian.
The promise of the preface is fulfilled. The whole work is a protest against the neglect of the education and training of the youth of the lower classes; and the life of Colonel Jack would be apt to have a good effect on youthful readers of the time. In Chapter X, when Jack has risen by his industry and humanity from being a slave on a Virginia plantation to the rank of an overseer, and finally to that of an independent planter, he makes a long digression to rejoice in his change of condition and character:
It was an inexpressible joy to me, that I was now like to be not only a man, but an honest man; and it yielded me a greater pleasure, that I was ransomed from being a vagabond, a thief, and a criminal, as I had been from a child, than that I was delivered from slavery, and the wretched state of a Virginia sold servant; I had notion enough in my mind of the hardship of the servant or slave, because I had felt it, and worked through it; I remembered it as a state of labour and servitude, hardship and suffering. But the other shocked my very nature, chilled my blood, and turned the very soul within me; the thought of it was like reflections upon hell and the damned spirits; it struck me with horror, it was odious and frightful to look back on, and it gave me a kind of fit, a convulsion or nervous disorder, that was very uneasy to me.