to one, provided handsomely for them afterwards, for fear of their meeting with a second mischance, and thereby bringing a stain upon their family.  But nowadays a petty alehouse-keeper, if he gives too much credit, a cheesemonger whose credit grows rotten, or a mechanic that is weary of living by his fingers-ends, makes no more ado, when he finds his circumstances uneasy, but whips into a saddle and thinks to get all things retrieved by the magic of those two formidable words, Stand and Deliver. Hence the profession is grown scandalous, since all the world knows that the same methods now makes an highwayman, that some years ago would have got a commission.

But hark ye, says one of the company, in the days of those gentlemen highwaymen, was there no way left for a poor man to get his living out of the road of honesty?  Puh!  Ay, replied Barnham, a hundred men were more ingenious then than they are now, and the fellows were so dexterous that it was dangerous for a man to laugh who had a good set of teeth, for fear of having them stole.  They made nothing of whipping hats and wigs off at noon-day; whipping swords from folks’ sides when it grew dusk; or making a midnight visit, in spite of locks, bolts, bars, and such like other little impediments to old misers, who kept their gold molding in chests till such honest fellows, at the hazard of their lives, came to set at liberty.  For my part, continued he, I believe Queen Anne’s war swept away the last remains of these brave spirits; for since the Peace of Utrac (as I think they call it) we have had a wondrous growth of blockheads, even in our business.  And if it were not for Shephard and Frazier, a hundred years hence, they would not think that in our times there were fellows bold enough to get sixpence out of a legal road, or dare to do anything without a quirk of the law to screen them.

All his auditors were wonderfully pleased with such discourses as these, and when the liquor had a little warmed them, would each in their turn tell a multitude of stories they had heard of the boldness, cunning, and dexterity of the thieves who lived before them.  In all cases whatever, evil is much sooner learnt than good, and a night debauch makes a ten times greater impression on the spirits than the most eloquent sermon.  Between the liquor and the tales people begin to form new ideas to themselves of things, and instead of looking on robbery as rapine and stealing as a villainous method of defrauding another, they, on the contrary, take the first for a gallant action, and the latter for a dexterous piece of cunning; by either of which they acquire the means of indulging themselves in what best suits their inclinations, without the fatigue of business or the drudgery of hard labour.