If the number of persons who have been killed, maimed, and disfigured for life, in consequence of stage-coach _mishaps_, could be ascertained, since the first establishment of steam-packets in this country, and, on the other hand, the number who have been similarly unfortunate by steam-boilers bursting, we should find that the stage-coach proportion would be in the ratio of ten to one! A solitary “blow up” of a steam-packet is “noised and proclaimed” from the Land’s End to the other extremity of the island; while hundreds of coach-accidents, and many of them fatal, occur, which are never heard of beyond the village, near to which the casualty takes place, or the neighbouring ale-house. These affairs it is to the interest of the proprietors to “hush up,” by means of a gratuity to the injured, rather than have their property ruined by an exposure in a court of justice. Should a poor man have a leg or an arm broken, through the carelessness of a drunken coachman, his poverty prevents his having recourse to law. Justice, in these cases, nine times in ten, is entirely out of the question, and an arrangement, between him and the proprietors, is easily effected; the unfortunate fellow rather receiving fifty or a hundred pounds “hush money,” than bring his action, when, perhaps, from some technical informality in the proceedings, (should he find a lawyer willing to act for him, being _poor_,) he would be _nonsuited_, with all the costs of both parties on his own shoulders, and be, moreover, ruined for ever, in both purse and person. These remarks were suggested by reading an American work, some time since, on the above subject, from which I have extracted the following _Stage-coach Adventures_.