Scarcely had I proceeded a hundred yards from the place where this fellow was bawling, when I came to the very situation which he ought to have occupied, I mean the _stocks_, which the people of Benenden have, with singular humanity, fitted up with a _bench_, so that the patient, while he is receiving the benefit of the remedy, is not exposed to the danger of catching cold by sitting, as in other places, upon the ground, always damp, and sometimes actually wet. But I would ask the people of Benenden what is the _use_ of this humane precaution, and, indeed, what is the use of the stocks themselves, if, while a fellow is ranting and bawling in the manner just described, at the distance of a hundred yards from the stocks, the stocks (as is here actually the case) are almost hidden by grass and nettles? This, however, is the case all over the country; not nettles and grass indeed smothering the stocks, but I never see any feet peeping through the holes anywhere, though I find Methodist parsons everywhere, and though _the law compels the parishes to keep up_ all the pairs of stocks that exist in all parts of them; and, in some parishes, they have to keep up several pairs. I am aware that a good part of the use of the stocks is the _terror_ they ought to produce. I am not supposing that they are of no use because not continually furnished with legs. But there is a wide difference between _always_ and _never_; and it is clear that a fellow who has had the stocks under his eye all his lifetime, and has _never_ seen a pair of feet peeping through them, will stand no more in awe of the stocks than rooks do of an old shoyhoy, or than the Ministers or their agents do of Hobhouse and Burdett. Stocks that never pinch a pair of ankles are like Ministerial responsibility; a thing to talk about, but for no other use; a mere mockery; a thing laughed at by those whom it is intended to keep in check. It is time that the stocks were again _in use_, or that the expense of keeping them up were put an end to.