When I was a young man, the place in
England I remember as most notorious for highwaymen and their exploits
was Finchley Common, near the metropolis; but Finchley Common, in the
progress of improvement, came to be enclosed, and the highwaymen lost
by these means the opportunity of exercising their gallant vocation. I
remember a friend of mine proposed to draw up for them a petition to
the House of Commons for compensation, which ran in this manner--'We,
your loyal highwaymen of Finchley Common and its neighbourhood having,
at great expense, laid in a stock of blunderbusses, pistols, and other
instruments for plundering the public, and finding ourselves impeded
in the exercise of our calling by the said enclosure of the said
Common of Finchley, humbly petition your Honourable House will be
pleased to assign to us such compensation as your Honourable House in
its wisdom and justice may think fit.'--Gentlemen, I must leave the
application to you....
"The greater part of human improvements, I am sorry to say, are made
after war, tumult, bloodshed, and civil commotion: mankind seem to
object to every species of gratuitous happiness, and to consider every
advantage as too cheap, which is not purchased by some calamity. I
shall esteem it as a singular act of God's providence, if this great
nation, guided by these warnings of history, not waiting till tumult
for Reform, nor trusting Reform to the rude hands of the lowest of the
people, shall amend their decayed institutions at a period when they
are ruled by a popular monarch, guided by an upright minister, and
blessed with profound peace.
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