Page:A Sketch of the Life of George Wilson, the Blackheath Pedestrian.djvu/11

 of experience and morality your worships have afforded me on the heretofore unsuspected vice of walking, either for the decision of wagers or the procuration of bread; and the example you have shewn, that on an extensive field of action, covered with the booths of itenerant shewmen, tumblers, conjurers, rope-dancers, and gin-sellers, for the attraction of the idle and the dissolute, and this for fifteen successive days, there was not an individual to be found, whom you could view as a possible cause of mischief, or in anywise dangerous to the peace and good order of your county, but a miserable old man of fifty-one displaying, by many a weary mile's walk, that the vigour of youthful agility had not deserted him even at the sun set of life; that he was still able to perform the unparalleled feat of walking a thousand miles in twenty days, and to prove on British Ground, that as Britain had excelled every country on the globe, in every point of competition, so in the humble art of ambulation she had a veteran, who could manifest her superiority, and who could still surpass the famed exertions of a Powell, a Steward, or a Barclay—men whose celebrity have heretofore challenged so much applause.

Gentlemen, I presume not to develope the reasons that have rendered the exertion of your power, towards myself exclusively, a measure of grave wisdom; nor to question the justice and impartiality of issuing your warrant against me individually, while so many others, Showmen, Tumblers, Conjurers, and Gin Sellers, at least equally, as I conceive, attractive of crowds as myself, were allowed to depart in peace and unmo-