166 THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



miles from the Wen, is on the seaside, and is thought 

 by the stockjobbers to afford a salubrious air. It is 

 so situated that a coach which leaves it not very early 

 in the morning reaches London by noon ; and, starting 

 to go back in two hours and a half afterwards, reaches 

 Brighton not very late at night. Great parcels of 

 stockjobbers stay at Brighton with the women and 

 children. They skip backward and forward on the 

 coaches, and actually carry on stock- jobbing in Change 

 Alley, though they reside at Brighton. The place is, 

 besides, a great resort with the whiskered gentry. 

 There are not less than about twenty coaches that 

 leave the Wen every day for this place ; and, there 

 being three or four different roads, there is a great 

 rivalship for the custom. This sets the people to 

 work to shorten and to level the roads ; and here you 

 see hundreds of men and horses constantly at work 

 to make pleasant and quick travelling for the Jews 

 and jobbers. The Jews and jobbers pay the turn- 

 pikes, to be sure ; but they get the money from the 

 land and labourers. They drain these, from John o' 

 Groat's House to the Land's End, and they lay out 

 some of the money on the Brighton roads." 



Cobbett is dead, and the Reform Act is an old story, 

 but the Jews and the jobbers swarm more than 

 ever. 



The tunnel through the castle hill was made by 

 consent of the then owner, Earl Somers, as a tablet 

 informs all who care to know. The entrance towards 

 the town is faced with white brick, in a style supposed 

 to be Norman. Above are the grounds, now public, 

 where a would-be mediaeval gateway, erected in 1777, 

 quite illegitimately impresses many innocents, and 

 below is the so-called Barons' Cave, an ancient excava- 

 tion in the soft sandstone where the Barons are (quite 

 falsely) said to have assembled in conclave before 

 forcing their will upon King John at Runnymede. 

 Unhappily for that tradition, the then Earl Warenne 

 was a supporter of the tyrant king, and any reforming 

 barons he might possibly have entertained at Reigate 



