Not every stage-coach carried a guard, and largely to that omission was due the prevalence of accidents in the last years of coaching. When we find guards first mentioned in old stage-coach advertisements, shortly after the middle of the eighteenth century, they were provided strictly for the purpose their name indicates--to guard the coaches against attack; and when such dangers grew more remote they were generally discontinued on day-coaches. Thus very often, except on long-distance stages, even the smart day-coaches carried no guard, and when they did, his functions were not so much to safeguard the coach in the original sense as to help the coachman by skidding and unskidding down hill, and to look after the way-bill and the passengers’ luggage. It was when no such useful functionary was carried, and when the coachman, combining the parts, descended from his box, and leaving the reins in charge of a passenger, or often merely resting them on the horses’ backs, went to explore the contents of the boots, or alighted for some other necessary business, that the horses often started off on their own accord and wrought disaster to coach and passengers. In early days, when horses were either not changed at all on a long journey, or went twenty-mile stages, nothing was less likely than that they would bolt. All they wanted to do was to lie down and die. But in the golden age of coaching, when well-kept teams working sometimes only six- or eight-mile stages were usual, that coach-proprietor who, from motives of economy or for any other reason, omitted to provide a guard, should have been made criminally responsible for any accidents caused by that omission. As a rule the guards of mails and stages went from end to end, being responsible for the contents of the way-bill. These spells of from ten to fifteen hours’ duty were naturally very tiring, and they generally rested the following day, or, if in London, took the opportunity of executing those varied commissions--from the filing of a Bill in Chancery to the matching of silks--of which every guard had plenty always in hand.