44 LYNCH LAW. 



such freedom delightful ; nevertheless, while I admit the 

 happiness of such regulations or irregulations, I must not 

 shut my eyes to the Lynch law or serious difficulty that 

 very naturally, on such a state of freedom, as freely and ac 

 cording to nature, arises. The Lynch law to which I allude 

 is, that if, when two persons are thus beautifully associated, 

 the man commits, or is even supposed to have committed, 

 an error, the relatives of the girl take the law into their 

 own hands, and, without a desire to conceal the scandal 

 and shield the girl, they at once give to the matter a terri 

 bly public complexion, by meeting the lover in the streets, 

 and shooting him down as if he were a mad dog. I 

 admire immensely the faith that mothers have in their 

 daughters I love the free intercourse of the spirit thus 

 permitted but I wonder not at the natural consequences 

 that unlimited intercourse, or a notion of injured honour, 

 or even mere jealousy, may occasion. 



During the time that I was making these observations 

 I had been delivering my letters of introduction ; a great 

 many gentlemen were out of town, but those who were 

 at home received me with the utmost friendliness and 

 kind attention. If I had seen the lower classes rudely 

 intoxicated with liberty, and many of the Boh-hoys dis 

 gustingly obscene, still had I put them by the'side of the 

 inhabitants of the London Billingsgate in blackguardism 

 there would have been but little difference. A Billings 

 gate man by the side of a Boh-hoy, however, would have 

 had this great advantage. In the former, though there 

 might have been all and everything to condemn, there is no 

 hail-fellow-well-met assumption as to being on a footing 

 with his betters ; while with the last there is that revolt 

 ing assumption, and the thief who had stolen a crust of 

 bread from a child's mouth, or her mite from the poorest 



