Oh! what servile homage these craven creatures did
pay these same coach fellows, more especially after witnessing this
or t'other act of brutality practised upon the weak and
unoffending--upon some poor friendless woman travelling with but
little money, and perhaps a brace of hungry children with her, or
upon some thin and half-starved man travelling on the hind part of
the coach from London to Liverpool with only eighteen pence in his
pocket after his fare was paid, to defray his expenses on the road;
for as the insolence of these knights was vast, so was their
rapacity enormous; they had been so long accustomed to have crowns
and half-crowns rained upon them by their admirers and flatterers,
that they would look at a shilling, for which many an honest
labourer was happy to toil for ten hours under a broiling sun, with
the utmost contempt; would blow upon it derisively, or fillip it
into the air before they pocketed it; but when nothing was given
them, as would occasionally happen--for how could they receive from
those who had nothing? and nobody was bound to give them anything,
as they had certain wages from their employers--then what a scene
would ensue! Truly the brutality and rapacious insolence of
English coachmen had reached a climax; it was time that these
fellows should be disenchanted, and the time--thank Heaven!--was
not far distant.
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