Guilt- Rachel Wall is the first person to express innocence of the crime for which she is being executed (unless we want to count Levi Ames’ assertion that he was let into a house, not the one who first broke in).  She confesses to other crimes, all some sort of theft, but still maintains that she is innocent of what she is being executed for.  She states, though, that God with ultimately judge the truth of the statement she is making.

Education-  Like many narratives, Rachel Wall’s starts out with her upbringing—how her parents treated her, what they did, and whether they attempted to make her a good honest person.  She says that they “gave me a good education, and instructed in me in the fundamental principles of the Christian religion” (283).  Wall blames her descent into crime on her husband, not her parents, but it appears that all of the narratives we’ve read have blamed it on someone.

Escape – In this narrative we are given the first instance of a criminal believing he could outsmart the system. Frasier openly talks of his plans to and succese in escaping from both prison and from those who caught him red handed. He was several times able to escape formal punishment through specific arrangements made for his petty thefts. Even after he was sentenced to death he entertained thoughts of his escape which he accomplished in order to rob a number of new stores and people.

education – Frasier openly admits that he is deserving of the punishment of death. He claims that his years of mischief had hardened him and led to the more extreme acts of wickedness that cost him his life. He says that he would’ve been better served used education as a means to get ahead and true to the narratives of the time warns others not to take the same path. “…the appearance of evil, whose beginning tho’ comparatively small, yet often ends in the most gross acts of wickedness.”

Poverty-  In a state of self-induced poverty (having settled his estate upon his children), Jubeart mines some silver and makes money out it.  “His simplicity,  and being badly paid for his work, had reduced him so low that he was greatly in want of linen and several other necessities” (164). 

Experiment-  In these two pages, we have seen perhaps the three biggest reasons attributed to crime: the first being that is in the criminal’s nature or upbringing, the second that extenuating circumstances drove him or her to commit the crime, and perhaps the third being simple curiosity.  Jubeart says that when he counterfeited the money out of silver, rather than “any fraudulent intention to impose upon the public,” that “it was more for the sake of trying an experiment” (164).