1827.] Letter on Affairs in general. 79 



confined a description of vehicle), not over conveniently accommodated. 

 Add to this, the bulk of M. Louis's person, besides proving a source of 

 annoyance to himself) was a serious affliction to the three individuals 

 (even of more reasonable dimension) who were his fellow-passengers. 

 French good humour, however, is not easily at fault ; the Monsieur 

 screwed himself into the smallest possible compass ; so as not, in fact, to 

 occupy more than two-thirds of the entire coach and all went on in 

 general silence, if not in general contentment, until the Mail reached the 

 end of the tirst stage, When he observed that as the coach was so 

 narrow, he would get out a little, " to stretch his legs." But this pro- 

 posal was too much. " Ah ! for Heaven's sake, Sir, spare me that !" 

 cried an old lady who had been sitting opposite, and whose endurance, 

 at length, was utterly exhausted Be assured, that your legs are of a 

 length perfectly intolerable already !" 



The accounts of the Waterloo Bridge Company, for the last year, 

 have been published. From which it appears that the returns of this 

 edifice, which cost A MILLION AND A HALF of money, are about seven 

 thousand pounds a year or seven shillings for each hundred on the 

 whole outlay. An evening paper, however, holds out to the company 

 some prospect for reimbursement. It observes that " Government has 

 never yet paid any thing for calling the bridge * Waterloo Bridge !' " 



The French papers, during the whole of the latter part of the last 

 month and the earlier portion of this, have been filled with strange ac- 

 counts of almost nightly robberies, attended with violence, and often 

 with murder, in the streets of Paris, I should almost be inclined to 

 think that some of these stories were invented or exaggerated ; for, 

 those who know the police of Paris, will scarcely conceive how such 

 thefts could be committed there and the plunder disposed of. But that 

 murder, or maltreatment, should often accompany robbery, where it 

 does take place at Paris, will not be surprising to any one who has ob- 

 served the French scheme of criminal judicial arrangement. 



For, in the commission of crime, as in all other proceedings, there is a 

 disposition about the human mind to be biassed by the circumstances im- 

 mediately about it, and by taught, or pre-conceived, opinions : and in 

 England, there is a deferential aversion to the sight of Death in 

 every shape among the people, which arises in a great degree, I 

 suspect, from the circumstance of its being always treated with great 

 reverence and solemnity by the public authorities, and kept, with all 

 the matters connected with it, as much as possible from before the eyes 

 of the multitude. All our arrangements, in fact, tend to this last object. 

 We see less of Death, than perhaps any people in Europe. We 

 have no drunken feasts over the body of the dead as in Ireland. No 

 public exposure in the street for charity, &c., as was the case in France, 

 and still is in many Catholic countries. The burial of our POOR is 

 prompt, decent, and certain. The robbery of graves convinced as 

 we are that a certain advantage results from the practice is vi- 

 gorously repressed, and punished by the law. And the slightest ap- 

 pearance of crime the finding of a body though but that of an in- 

 fant with marks of violence upon it or any evidence, however slight, 

 which seems to shew that murder has been committed becomes the 

 subject, instantly, of the most unwearied, indefatigable canvas, by every 

 engine of judicial power, all over the country. No MURDERER can 

 ever be safe in England, until he has been tried, and acquitted. 



