“The stage-coachmen of England, at the time of which I am speaking, considered themselves mighty fine gentry; nay, I verily believe, the most important personages of the realm, and their entertaining this high opinion of themselves can hardly be wondered at: they were low fellows, but masters at driving; driving was in fashion, and sprigs of nobility used to dress as coachmen, and imitate the slang and behaviour of the coachmen, from whom occasionally they would take lessons in driving, as they sat beside them on the box, which post of honour any sprig of nobility who happened to take a place on a coach claimed as his unquestionable right; and these sprigs would smoke cigars and drink sherry with the coachmen in bar-rooms and on the road; and when bidding them farewell would give them a guinea or a half-guinea, and shake them by the hand, so that these fellows, being low fellows, very naturally thought no small liquor of themselves, but would talk familiarly of their friends Lords So-and-so, the Honourable Misters So-and-so, and Sir Harry and Sir Charles, and be wonderfully saucy to any one who was not a lord or something of the kind; and this high opinion of themselves received daily augmentation from the servile homage paid them by the generality of the untitled male passengers, especially those on the forepart of the coach, who used to contend for the honour of sitting on the box with the coachman when no sprig was nigh to put in his claim. Oh! what servile homage these craven creatures did pay these same coach fellows, more especially 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 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. Let the craven dastards who used to curry favour with them, and applaud their brutality, lament their loss now that they and their vehicles have disappeared from the roads.”