The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

And this is the cause why many times men as well as women, and men of

the greatest and best qualities other ways, yet have found themselves

weak in this part, and have not been able to bear the weight of a

secret joy or of a secret sorrow, but have been obliged to disclose it,

even for the mere giving vent to themselves, and to unbend the mind

oppressed with the load and weights which attended it. Nor was this

any token of folly or thoughtlessness at all, but a natural consequence

of the thing; and such people, had they struggled longer with the

oppression, would certainly have told it in their sleep, and disclosed

the secret, let it have been of what fatal nature soever, without

regard to the person to whom it might be exposed. This necessity of

nature is a thing which works sometimes with such vehemence in the

minds of those who are guilty of any atrocious villainy, such as secret

murder in particular, that they have been obliged to discover it,

though the consequence would necessarily be their own destruction.

Now, though it may be true that the divine justice ought to have the

glory of all those discoveries and confessions, yet 'tis as certain

that Providence, which ordinarily works by the hands of nature, makes

use here of the same natural causes to produce those extraordinary

effects.

I could give several remarkable instances of this in my long

conversation with crime and with criminals. I knew one fellow that,

while I was in prison in Newgate, was one of those they called then

night-fliers. I know not what other word they may have understood it

by since, but he was one who by connivance was admitted to go abroad

every evening, when he played his pranks, and furnished those honest

people they call thief-catchers with business to find out the next day,

and restore for a reward what they had stolen the evening before. This

fellow was as sure to tell in his sleep all that he had done, and every

step he had taken, what he had stolen, and where, as sure as if he had

engaged to tell it waking, and that there was no harm or danger in it,

and therefore he was obliged, after he had been out, to lock himself

up, or be locked up by some of the keepers that had him in fee, that

nobody should hear him; but, on the other hand, if he had told all the

particulars, and given a full account of his rambles and success, to

any comrade, any brother thief, or to his employers, as I may justly

call them, then all was well with him, and he slept as quietly as other

people.