Many of the boldest sunk beneath the fear of betrayal, and themselves, became evidence for the crown; and in five months, a county shaken with midnight meetings, and blazing with insurrectionary fires, became almost the most tranquil in its province.

It may well be believed, that he who rendered this important service on this trying emergency, could not be passed over, and the name of J.Larkins soon after appeared in the Gazette as one of his Majesty's justices of the peace for the county; pretty much in the same spirit in which a country gentleman converts the greatest poacher in his neighbourhood by making him, his gamekeeper.
In person he was a large and powerfully built man, considerably above six feet in height, and possessing great activity, combined with powers of enduring fatigue almost incredible.

With an eye like a hawk, and a heart that never knew fear, he was the person, of all others, calculated to strike terror into the minds of the country people.

The reckless daring with which he threw himself into danger--the almost impetuous quickness with which he followed up a scent, whenever information reached him of an important character--had their full effect upon a people who, long accustomed to the slowness and the uncertainty of the law were almost paralyzed at beholding detection and punishment follow on crime, as certainly as the thunder-crash follows the lightning.
His great instrument for this purpose was the obtaining information from sworn members of the secret societies, and whose names never appeared in the course of a trial or a prosecution, until the measure of their iniquity was completed, when they usually received a couple of hundred pounds, blood-money, as it was called, with which they took themselves away to America or Australia--their lives being only secured while they remained, by the shelter afforded them in the magistrate's own house.
And so it happened that, constantly there numbered from ten to twelve of these wretches, inmates of his family, each of whom had the burden of participation in one murder at least, waiting for an opportunity to leave the country, unnoticed and unwatched.
Such a frightful and unnatural state of things, can hardly be conceived; and yet, shocking as it was, it was a relief to that which led to it.

I have dwelt, perhaps too long upon this painful subject; but let my reader now accompany me a little farther, and the scene shall be changed.