[ 58 ] [JAN. 



FULL-LENGTHS, N. III. THE TAX-GATHERER. 



WE have somewhere heard or read of a laudable custom existing in 

 some foreign states, by which all the public executioners are gathered 

 into one family compact, and from which stock government always looks 

 for and meets with a due supply of rope-men and wheel-men, making of 

 the younger branches turnkeys and assistants. It is a most wise ordina- 

 tion a splendid invention to blunt the naughty prejudices of the world 

 to make the otherwise sufferers smirk and whistle in the sour, hard-lined 

 face of public opinion. Thus hangmen are great and invulnerable in their 

 connexions ; each may trace " a long line of ancestry." Moreover, he 

 has a living world of his own, ample enough to supply all the wants of 

 mutual recognizance, sympathy and praise, which poor human nature, 

 whether breaking stones in the highway, or cracking filberts in a regal 

 hall, desires and pines for. With what delicate, yet peculiar care, must 

 the education of the future hangmen be directed; what parental lessons 

 on tender-heartedness and the locality of the jugular, must be needful, 

 in order to sustain the renown of the house, and to make, as Dryden has 

 it, a gentleman " die sweetly." How ideas of self-importance must 

 grow up with the young rogues ! how they must leer at and speculate 

 on the unhanged part of the community ! perhaps some little Caligula in 

 corduroy wishing, in all the yearnings of early genius, that the whole 

 township had but one neck. How complacently these puny varlets must 

 play at marbles in the parth-way of a field of hempseed ; what significant 

 looks they may send after the passengers ! Can any one doubt the benefit, 

 both political and social, of such constant intermarryings of the families 

 of these humble branches of the executive ? We think not. 



It is now, perhaps, high time that we speak of our Tax-gatherer ; we 

 have, indeed, from the first, been making an indirect, crab-like advance 

 to him : some men are not to be run at full butt ; and, we think, no man 

 less so here we put it to the candour of our readers than a Tax-gatherer. 

 We have spoken of the republican coalition the Owen, New-Harmony- 

 like establishment of foreign hangmen. We think a hint might be taken 

 from it for the benefit of our Tax-gatherers ; they are an ill-used race ; a 

 reviled, abused genus. We feel for their privations ; our pen weeps ink 

 over their injuries. We roundly assert, that Tax-gatherers' should, like 

 the unassuming law-officers before noted, make head against the mocks 

 and scoffings of the world they ought to consolidate to become one 

 body. 



We have said Tax-gatherers were an injured race ; our proof, like a 

 dutiful page, follows close upon the heels of, and gives his weapons to, the 

 knight Assertion. There are two broad ways not to mention the hun- 

 dred alleys, the sweet green lanes to a man's comfort and good opinion : 

 firstly, the road of praise to his covering of flesh ; secondly, the high- 

 way of approbation to its intellectual co-mate. Are there such ways to 

 a Tax-gatherer ? alas ! we think not. Or if there be, are they tra- 

 velled are they gone over ? never. The Muck slush -heath of honest 

 Brulgruddery is not less frequented. Our proof is ready. We once 

 more put it to our readers at least, to our housekeeper-readers, for we 

 are not to be tricked by the gratuitous candour of the tenants of lodgings 

 for single gentlemen, " within twenty minutes walk of 'Change" but we 

 put it to those experienced persons, who really know what the face of a 

 Tax-gatherer is who have stared at it, pondered on it, speculated on 



