Didactic fiction; Domestic fiction; England -- Fiction; Married women -- Fiction
The attorney then asked the bailiff with how many actions Booth was
charged, and was informed there were five besides the doctor's, which
was much the heaviest of all. Proper bonds were presently provided,
and the doctor and the serjeant's friend signed them; the bailiff, at
the instance of the attorney, making no objection to the bail.
[Illustration: _Lawyer Murphy_]
Booth, we may be assured, made a handsome speech to the doctor for
such extraordinary friendship, with which, however, we do not think
proper to trouble the reader; and now everything being ended, and the
company ready to depart, the bailiff stepped up to Booth, and told him
he hoped he would remember civility-money.
"I believe" cries Booth, "you mean incivility-money; if there are any
fees due for rudeness, I must own you have a very just claim."
"I am sure, sir," cries the bailiff, "I have treated your honour with
all the respect in the world; no man, I am sure, can charge me with
using a gentleman rudely. I knows what belongs to a gentleman better;
but you can't deny that two of my men have been knocked down; and I
doubt not but, as you are a gentleman, you will give them something to
drink."
Booth was about to answer with some passion, when the attorney
interfered, and whispered in his ear that it was usual to make a
compliment to the officer, and that he had better comply with the
custom.
"If the fellow had treated me civilly," answered Booth, "I should have
had no objection to comply with a bad custom in his favour; but I am
resolved I will never reward a man for using me ill; and I will not
agree to give him a single farthing."
"'Tis very well, sir," said the bailiff; "I am rightly served for my
good-nature; but, if it had been to do again, I would have taken care
you should not have been bailed this day."
Doctor Harrison, to whom Booth referred the cause, after giving him a
succinct account of what had passed, declared the captain to be in the
right. He said it was a most horrid imposition that such fellows were
ever suffered to prey on the necessitous; but that the example would
be much worse to reward them where they had behaved themselves ill.
"And I think," says he, "the bailiff is worthy of great rebuke for
what he hath just now said; in which I hope he hath boasted of more
power than is in him. We do, indeed, with great justice and propriety
value ourselves on our freedom if the liberty of the subject depends
on the pleasure of such fellows as these!"
"It is not so neither altogether," cries the lawyer; "but custom hath
established a present or fee to them at the delivery of a prisoner,
which they call civility-money, and expect as in a manner their due,
though in reality they have no right."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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