With certain exceptions presently to be noted, every man's hand was against the fugitive sailor, and this being so it followed as a matter of course that in his inveterate pursuit of him the gangsman found more honourable allies than that nefarious person, the man-selling informer. The class whom the sailor himself, in his contempt of the good feeding he never shared, nicknamed "big-bellied placemen"--the pompous mayors, the portly aldermen and the county magistrate who knew a good horse or hound but precious little law, were almost to a man the gangsman's coadjutors. Lavishly wined and dined at Admiralty expense, they urbanely "backed" the regulating captain's warrants, consistently winked at his glaring infractions of law and order, and with the most commendable loyalty imaginable did all in their power to forward His Majesty's service. Even the military, if rightly approached on their pinnacle of lofty superiority, now and then condescended to lend the gangsman a hand. Did not Sloper, Major-General and Commandant at Lewes, throw a whole company into the siege of Brighton? These post-prandial concessions on the part of bigwigs desirous of currying favour in high places on the whole told heavily against the sorely harassed object of the gangsman's quest, rendering it, amongst other things, extremely unsafe for him to indulge in those unconventional outbursts which, under happier conditions, so uniformly marked his jovial moods. At the playhouse, for example, he could not heave empty bottles or similar tokens of appreciation upon the stage without grave risk of incurring the fate that overtook Steven David, Samuel Jenkins and Thomas Williams, three sailors of Falmouth town who, merely because they adopted so unusual a mode of applauding a favourite, were by magisterial order handed over to Lieut. Box of H.M.S. _Blonde_, with a peremptory request that they should be transferred forthwith to that floating stage where the only recognised "turns" were those of the cat and the capstan. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1537--Capt. Ballard, 13 Dec. 1806.] Luckily for the sailor and those of other callings who shared his liability to the press, the civil authorities did not range themselves on the gangsman's side with complete unanimity. Local considerations of trade, coupled with some faint conception of the hideous injustice the seafaring classes groaned under, and groaned in vain, here and there outweighed patriotism and dinners. Little by little a cantankerous spirit of opposition got abroad, and every now and then, at this point or at that, some mayor or alderman, obsessed by this spirit beyond his fellows and his time, seized such opportunities as office threw in his way to mark his disapproval of the wrongs the sailor suffered. Had this attitude been more general, or more consistent in itself, the press-gang would not have endured for a day.