An historian of great credit affirms, that this practice was grafted on that of keeping a game-keeper; and for this reason it is, that although there be many more of them in every house than are necessary to keep the game, they are nevertheless known under the title of game-keepers even unto this day. In former times, continues he, every father of a family and his children, were sportmen more or less. It mattered not who started the game, they could all shoot without distinction; and it mattered as little what part of the house a thief attempted to break in upon, the first man he met thought himself obliged to defend the premises. But when they grew lazy, spiritless, and purse-proud, they must needs keep their game-keepers like lords, and each according to his estate, got as many as he could well maintain, and those he employed not only to knock down a hare, or a partridge, now and then, for the master’s table, but to them he entrusted the whole defence of his estate inclosed and common, barn-yards, orchards, and kitchin-grounds, and it was thought presumption in any body else to do any thing besides running away when any body attempted to disturb the house. Lewis Baboon would have kept you forty or fifty at a time, and this when nobody was meddling with him, as he said, to guard his poultry, and attend him to church. These fellows did nothing from morning to night, but first turn upon one heel, and then upon another, put a gun sometimes to their hip, sometimes to their nose, sometimes to their shoulder; and, in short, played so many antic tricks with a musket, that few or none of them could remember or distinguish its real use. But they bilked their landlords, cursed, swore, and bullied, wherever they went, and in many houses where such fellows were kept, nobody durst say his life was his own for them. It may be hard enough to tell how any matter of a family came to keep such people about him; but the most amazing thing of all is, how John Bull, so kind a father, and so good a master, should ever think of entertaining so many of them, and trust more to their affection, than to that of his own children.