Nothing gives more entertainment to honest men than to see rogues
and sharpers tricked and punished in the pursuit of their schemes of
villainy, by making their own contrivances instrumental in bringing
down their wickedness upon their own heads. In these instances,
Justice seems as it were to be acting in person, and saves the trouble
of publicly enforcing punishment by the penal laws; but indeed vice
carries with it its own punishment, and the misery attendant upon it in
this world, seems always pretty exactly balanced to its various degrees
of enormity. The abandoned man drags on a contemptible or infamous
life, with a constantly deadened or disturbed conscience, and amidst
associates like himself, where he can never hope to meet with either
friendship or fidelity.
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