treet, while we peripatetics are
very glad to watch an opportunity to whisk across a passage, very
thankful that we are not run over for interrupting the machine, that
carries in it a person neither more handsome, wise, nor valiant than the
meanest of us. For this reason, were I to propose a tax, it should
certainly be upon coaches and chairs: for no man living can assign a
reason why one man should have half a street to carry him at his ease,
and perhaps only in pursuit of pleasures, when as good a man as himself
wants room for his own person to pass upon the most necessary and urgent
occasion. Till such an acknowledgment is made to the public, I shall
take upon me to vest certain rights in the scavengers of the cities of
London and Westminster, to take the horses and servants of all such as
do not become or deserve such distinctions into their peculiar custody.
The offenders themselves I shall allow safe conduct to their places of
abode in the carts of the said scavengers, but their horses shall be
mounted by their footmen, and sent into the service abroad: and I take
this opportunity in the first place to recruit the regiment of my good
old friend the brave and honest Sylvius,[152] that they be as well
taught as they are fed. It is to me most miraculous, so unreasonable an
usurpation as this I am speaking of should so long have been tolerated.
We hang a poor fellow for taking any trifle from us on the road, and
bear with the rich for robbing us of the road itself. Such a tax as this
would be of great satisfaction to us who walk on foot; and since the
distinction of riding in a coach is not to be appointed according to a
man's merit or service to their country, nor that liberty given as a
reward for some eminent virtue, we should be highly contented to see
them pay something for the insult they do us in the state they take upon
them while they are drawn by us.

Till they have made us some reparation of this kind, we the peripatetics
of Great Britain cannot think ourselves well treated, while every one
that is able is allowed to set up an equipage.

As for my part, I cannot but admire how persons, conscious to themselves
of no manner of superiority above others, can out of mere pride or
laziness expose themselves at this rate to public view, and put us all
upon pronouncing those three terrible syllables, Who is that? When it
comes to that question, our method is to consider the mien and air of
the passenger, and comfo