A View from France
Highwaymen are generally well mounted; one of them will stop a coach containing six or seven travellers. With one hand he will present a pistol, with the other his hat, asking the unfortunate passengers most politely for their purses or their lives... If he receives a reasonable contribution, he retires without doing you any injury.
When there are several highwaymen together, they will search you thoroughly and leave nothing. Others take only a part of what they find; but all these robbers ill-treat only those who try to defend themselves.
I have been told that some highwaymen are quite polite and generous, begging to be excused for being forced to rob, and leaving passengers the wherewithal to continue their journey.
César de Saussure (letter to his family, 1726)
The English, prejudiced in favour of their nation, defend with the utmost warmth their most vicious customs, as well as their wisest laws, and are as sanguine for the defects of their constitution, as for the most essential advantages attached to it.
They will rather joke upon this want of security on their roads, if you reproach them with it, than own it is a scandalous thing, in a government otherwise so well regulated, that a man cannot travel in safety.
There are some Englishmen not less vain in boasting of the address of their highwaymen, than of the bravery of their troops.
Jean Bernard le Blanc (letter, 1738)
When there are several highwaymen together, they will search you thoroughly and leave nothing. Others take only a part of what they find; but all these robbers ill-treat only those who try to defend themselves.
I have been told that some highwaymen are quite polite and generous, begging to be excused for being forced to rob, and leaving passengers the wherewithal to continue their journey.
César de Saussure (letter to his family, 1726)
The English, prejudiced in favour of their nation, defend with the utmost warmth their most vicious customs, as well as their wisest laws, and are as sanguine for the defects of their constitution, as for the most essential advantages attached to it.
They will rather joke upon this want of security on their roads, if you reproach them with it, than own it is a scandalous thing, in a government otherwise so well regulated, that a man cannot travel in safety.
There are some Englishmen not less vain in boasting of the address of their highwaymen, than of the bravery of their troops.
Jean Bernard le Blanc (letter, 1738)
posted by Archie Pullen | 5:54 pm
1 Comments:
If Jean Bernard was right - and I bet he was - the English haven't changed much. Now we boast of the crowded nature of our trains and roads and the impossibility of travel.
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