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He can take me up with one hand, and throw me out at window; and he would, too, if he did but imagine " "Pogh!" says the exciseman, "I believe I am as good a man as he. Besides, here are five of us." "I don't know what five," cries the landlady, "my husband shall have nothing to do in it. Nor shall any violent hands be laid upon anybody in my house.
The charge against him was not pressed he was simply not wanted and the statement by the head exciseman that a man working for the Government should not criticize the Government was pretty good logic, anyway.
The latter flavour it owed to a certain cupboard, containing, among other articles, a few canisters of real Havannah, which, whether from respect to the manufacture, or out of a reverend fear of the exciseman, Mrs.
But, on the other hand, as the gauger's object was to take them, if possible, by surprise, it frequently happened that his appearance was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. It was then that the prompt ingenuity of the people was fully seen, felt, and understood by the baffled exciseman, who too often had just grounds for bitterly cursing their talent at outwitting him.
Now there is no peculiarity more marked in all the branches of the Anglo-Saxon race than the extreme impatience with which they submit to any direct interference of the government in the private affairs of the citizens; and no form of such interference has ever been so generally odious as the excise, and, by consequence, no officer so generally detested as the exciseman.
Words passed, and the exciseman shot my lord. Never shall I forget that day; such riding, such running, the whole country side afoot; but the same night my lord breathed his last; and the mad and wild reprobate that did the deed was taken up and sent off to Edinburgh.
"At any rate," said Stair, "killing a blue-jacket or an exciseman will do us no good, and I am for firing blanks except in the very last extremity of course, if it is our life or that of another man, I think we owe it to ourselves to see that the funeral is the other fellow's!" Stair Garland slept that night outside, wrapped in his plaid, with Whitefoot crouched in the corner of it.
What his authority really was is a matter of easy estimate. Judgment of life and death was retained by the procurator. Justice was administered in the name and according to the decretals of Rome. Yet more significant, the royal house was jointly occupied by the imperial exciseman, and all his corps of assistants, registrars, collectors, publicans, informers, and spies.
"Very true, mistress," said the puppet-show man, "I don't care what religion comes; provided the Presbyterians are not uppermost; for they are enemies to puppet-shows." "And so you would sacrifice your religion to your interest," cries the exciseman; "and are desirous to see popery brought in, are you?"
"No one crosses my path with impunity." Astonished at hearing his profession thus mentioned, the exciseman, who was the greatest bully in the town, slipped on one side with consternation, and all those present lifted up their eyes and hands with astonishment.
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