possibly we might have seen a shake from an
evil-looking nab (a head); might have been
treated with a kick from an angry stamp
(a leg); and might have been told we had
made a panter (a heart) leap much quicker
than it need have done if we had only
learned how, fitly, to hold our prating-cheat
(our tongue).

And were there many of these rogues,
these gipsies, who manufactured pedler's
French, and spluttered gibberish? Yes;
they abounded. We live, says our informant,
in a thieving, cheating, plundering
age. Cozening is become a topping trade,
only we have got a genteeler way of stealing
now than only to take a man's horse
from under him on the highway, and a
little loose money out of his pocket; our
rapparees are men of better breeding and
fashion, and scorn to play at such small
game; they sweep away a noble estate with
one slight brush, and bid both the gallows
and horse-pond defiance: and the mob is not
always just in this point, for one pickpocket
deserves a horse-pond as well as another,
without any regard to quality or fine
clothes. And if our informant is not, in
all this, a Français à la Pedler and a
gibberdoon himself, we will undertake to
translate every word of him into purer
English! He says, also, that when great
rogues are in authority, and have the laws
against oppression and robbery in their
own hands, little thieves only go to pot for
it: and here again, no doubt, he thinks
he has turned a pretty expression, and may
be complimented on the gracefulness of his
language! According, indeed, to stamflesh,
or cant, he might congratulate himself on
having issued a clincher (a word not yet
quite out of usage); and he might offer to
draw his tilter (his sword), or give a job
(a guinea), if in all Rumville (London)
any one should dare to contradict him.
Which testimony of his, as to the innocence
and mutual trust, and well-tasting probity
of the " good old times," is borne out, too.
And by respectable authority. Tobias Smollett,
M.D. (sleeping under vines and citrons,
and near the chirp of the cicala, in pale
Leghorn), has something to say about it;
William Cowper, Esq., of the Inner Temple,
has a little more. The doctor's words
are:

"England was at this period infested
with robbers, assassins, and incendiaries . .
. . . Thieves and robbers were now become
more desperate and savage than ever they
had appeared since man was civilised. In
the exercise of their rapine, they wounded,
maimed, and even murdered the unhappy
sufferers, through a wantonness of
barbarity. They circulated letters, demanding
sums of money from certain individuals,
on pain of reducing their houses to ashes,
and their families to ruin."

And Cowper, touching another kind of
villainy abroad, writes:

   But when a country (one that I could name)
   In prostitution sinks the sense of shame;
   When infamous venality, grown bold,
   Writes on his bosom, to be let or sold;
   When perjury, that Heaven-defying vice,
   Sells oaths by tale, and at the lowest price;
   Stamps God's own name upon a lie just made,
   To turn a penny in the way of trade;
   When avarice starves (and never hides his face)
   Two or three millions of the human race,

then may gone-by nations

   Cry aloud, in every careless ear,
   Stop while you may; suspend your mad career.

Yes. For, within the life-time of those
with whom Cowper lived, an earl, the Earl
of Macclesfield, and the Lord High
Chancellor of England, was committed to the
Tower for embezzlement! In the house of
the king's faithful Commons, Sir George
Oxenden had declared that the crimes and
misdemeanors of his lordship were many;
and these appearing to be that he had
embezzled the estates and effects of many
widows, orphans, and lunatics, besides
selling the offices in his gift, and being
guilty of various other irregularities, he
was condemned, after a twenty days' trial,
to pay a fine of thirty thousand pounds;
and he was kept in safe custody for the
six weeks that sufficed for his people to
collect the money. Then Sir Robert
Walpole, with his accredited maxim that every
man had his price, was yet in people's
mouths; and many elections had to be
inquired into, notably that of Westminster,
in connexion with which the high-sheriff
was taken into custody, and some army
officers who had acted under him, and
some justices of the peace, had to receive
a reprimand from the before-mentioned
faithful Commons, and to go down on their
knees at the bar of the house to hear it.

All very sad really. All almost enough
to make us take a rattler (a coach) some
darkmans (night), and drive to a country
where the ruffian (his Satanic majesty) is
not so present, and where we could live
peety (cheerful), without the fear of every
old Mr. Gory (piece of gold money) we
had, and every witcher-bubber (silver
bowl), being nabbed (stolen) from us by
the first prig who chose to clutch us deftly
about the nub (neck)!

But was there nothing done to this