Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/196

162 by the House of Commons into the state of the Coal Trade, it appears that five-sixths of the London public is supplied by a class of middle-men who are called in the trade "Brass-plate Coal-Merchants:" these consist principally of merchants' clerks, gentlemen's servants, and others, who have no wharfs of their own, but merely give their orders to some true coal-merchant, who sends in the coals from his wharf: the brass-plate coal-merchant, of course, receiving a commission for his agency.

(209.) In Italy this system is carried to a great extent amongst the voituriers, or persons who undertake to convey travellers. There are some possessed of greater fluency and a more persuasive manner, who frequent the inns where the English resort, and who, as soon as they have made a bargain for the conveyance of a traveller, go out amongst their countrymen and procure some other voiturier to do the job for a considerably smaller sum, themselves pocketing the difference. A short time before the day of starting, the contractor appears before his customer in great distress, regretting his inability to perform the journey on account of the dangerous illness of a mother or some relative, and requesting to have his cousin or brother substituted for him. The English traveller rarely fails to acquiesce in this change, and often praises the filial piety of the rogue who has deceived him.