At the same time men of undoubted intellectual power are sometimes found among criminals. Villon, one of the truest, if not one of the greatest of poets, was a criminal, a man perpetually in danger of the gallows; it does not seem to me, however, by any means clear that he was what we should call an instinctive criminal. Vidocq, a clever criminal who became an equally successful police official, and wrote his interesting and instructive _Memoirs_, may not have been, as Lombroso claims, a man of genius, but he was certainly a man of great ability. Eugene Aram is now generally recognised as a comparative philologist who foresaw and to some extent inaugurated some of the later advances of that science.
Jonathan Wild is an interesting example of a criminal of great practical ability, a man whose genius for organisation would have made him equal to any position in which he might have been placed. "In the republic of the thieves' guild"--I quote Mr. Pike's excellent summary of his career[61]--"Jonathan Wild became as it were a dictator; but like many of the great men of the middle ages, he owed his greatness to double dealing. From small beginnings he became, in London at least, the receiver-in-chief of all stolen goods. He acquired and maintained this position by the persistent application of two simple principles: he did his best to aid the law in convicting all those misdoers who would not recognise his authority, and he did his best to repair the losses of all those who had been plundered and who took him into their confidence. By degrees he set up an office for the recovery of missing property, at which the government must, for a time, have connived. Here the robbed sought an audience of the only man who could promise them restitution; here the robbers congregated like workmen at a workshop, to receive the pay for the work they had done. Wild was, in some respects, more autocratic than many kings, for he had the power of life and death. If he could reward the thief who submitted to him, he could hang the robber who omitted to seek his protection. If he could, for a sufficient fee, discover what had been lost, he could, when his claims were forgotten, make the losers repent their want of worldly wisdom. He was not above his position, and never allowed such a sentiment as generosity to interfere with the plain rules of business. He carried a wand of office, made of silver, which he asserted to be an indication of authority given to him by the government. Valuable goods he carefully stowed away in some of his numerous warehouses; and when there was no market for them in England, through the apathy of the persons robbed, or the dangers to dishonest purchasers, he despatched them on board a ship of his own to Holland, where he employed a trustworthy agent. Like barbarian monarchs, he gave presents when he wished to express a desire for friendship and assistance; and in order that the recipients of these favours might not be compromised, he retained a staff of skilled artizans, who could so change the appearance of a snuff-box, a ring, or a watch, that not even the real owner could recognise it. When satisfied with the good service of any of his subordinates who might be in danger, he gave them posts in his own household, with money and clothing, and found employment for them in clipping and counterfeiting coin. He did not even restrict his operations to London, but, in imitation of other great conquerors and pillagers, or perhaps through the independent working of his own intellect, he divided England into districts, and assigned a gang to each; each had to account to him, as the counties of old to the king, for the revenue collected. And as a well-appointed army has its artillery, its cavalry, and its infantry, so among Jonathan Wild's retainers there was a special corps for robbing in church, another for various festivities in London, and a third with a peculiar aptitude for making the most of a country fair. The body-guards of a sovereign are usually chosen for their appearance, or for tried valour in the field. Wild's principle of selection was somewhat different. He considered that fidelity to himself was the first virtue in a follower, and that fidelity was certain only when there was absolute inability to be unfaithful. For this reason the greatest recommendation which any recruit could possess was that he had been a convict, had been transported, and had returned before the time of his sentence had expired. Such a man as this not only had experience in his profession, but was legally incapable of giving evidence against his employer. Through his actions he was always in the power of Wild, who, as the law stood, could never be in his power. Thus Wild's authority was in two ways supreme.