Few people therefore would propose to live by entertaining
travellers, and consequently there would be few or no inns.
Travellers would be obliged to have recourse to the
hospitality of private families in the same manner as in all
other barbarous countries; and being in this situation real
objects of compassion, private families would think
themselves obliged to receive them even though this
hospitality was extremely oppressive. Strangers, says Homer,
are sacred persons, and under the protection of Jupiter, but
no wise man would ever choose to send for a stranger unless
he was a bard or a soothsayer. The danger too of travelling
either alone or with few attendants made all men of
consequence carry along with them a numerous suite of
retainers, which rendered this hospitality still more
oppressive. Hence the orders to build hostellaries in 24 and
85; and as many people had chosen to follow the old fashion
and to live rather at the expense of other people than at
their own, hence the complaint of the keepers of the
hostellaries and the order thereupon in Act 85.

I cannot conclude this letter, though already too long,
without expressing to your Lordship my concern, and still
more my indignation, at what has lately passed both at
London and at Edinburgh. I have often thought that the
Supreme Court of the United Kingdom very much resembled a
jury. The law lords generally take upon them to sum up the
evidence and to explain the law to the other peers, who
generally follow their opinion implicitly. Of the two law
lords who upon this occasion instructed them, the one has
always run after the applause of the mob; the other, by far
the most intelligent, has always shown the greatest dread of
popular odium, which, however, he has not been able to
avoid. His inclinations also have always been suspected to
favour one of the parties. He has upon this occasion, I
suspect, followed rather his fears and his inclinations than
his judgment. I could say a great deal more upon this
subject to your Lordship, but I am afraid I have already
said too much. I would rather, for my own part, have the
solid reputation of your most respectable president, though
exposed to the insults of a brutal mob, than all the vain
and flimsy applause that has ever y