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Updated: June 5, 2025
What an extraordinary little piece of conceit the daughter was, with her Gallicised graces and daring affectations, not fit for well-bred English girls to associate with! What strange people were those they assembled round about them! Sir Francis Clavering was a gambler, living notoriously in the society of blacklegs and profligates.
"Timon Croesus is eighteen or nineteen, or, perhaps, twenty years old; and Polly, I tell you, he is actually blase, worn out with dissipation, the companion of blacklegs, the chevalier of Cyprians, tipsy every night, and haggard every morning. Timon Croesus is the puny caricature of a man, mentally, morally, and physically.
Having received complaints of several young men being rooked in the place, we can, if we prove that some of its frequenters are blacklegs, shut the place up altogether. We should do it quietly, and without fuss, if possible; but if we shut it up several others of the same sort will be certain to close their doors.
"Ay, ay," interrupted he, "fine work! rare doings! a merry Vauxhalling, with pistols at all your noddles! thought as much! thought he'd tip the perch; saw he wasn't stanch; knew he'd go by his company, a set of jackanapes! all blacklegs! nobody warm among 'em: fellows with a month's good living upon their backs, and not sixpence for the hangman in their pockets!"
Men hungering to death for lack of opportunity to earn a crust are the materials from which "blacklegs" are made, by whose aid the labourer is constantly defeated in his attempts to improve his condition. This is the problem that underlies all questions of Trades Unionism and all Schemes for the Improvement of the Condition of the Industrial Army.
And out of the hubbub I heard a similar sentence rising all the time. Why, I cannot tell. Perhaps the Venetians were blacklegs. But evidently a Venetian, or the whole Venetian nation, had recently done them a wrong.
When there I feel that you are all under my protection; I consider you all as my children. Besides, the country, how delightful! the mountains, the valleys, the river, the woods, and then the company so select! No sharpers, no adventurers, no blacklegs: at Ems you can be taken in by no one except your intimate friend. To Ems, by all means.
"That's about it, Nellie, but most people find it easy to believe what they want to believe. Anyway, I've got it straight from headquarters that the squatters expect to get blacklegs working under enough military protection to make blacklegging feel safe, as they look at it, and then they think our unions will break right down.
L , who told me of certain curious books of mediaeval history. 'Did he know them? 'No, and he dared say Mr. L did not, either! Who was Mr. Whereupon Borrow repeated at least twelve times, 'Immensely liked! As if a man could be immensely liked! quite insultingly. Mr. Borrow we don't associate with Blacklegs, exactly."
Take nobles whose ancestral titles ought to be to English ears like the sound of clarions, awakening the most slothful to the scorn of money-bags and the passion for renown. Lo! in that mocking dance of death called the Progress of the Age, one who did not find Enough in a sovereign's revenue, and seeks The Little More as a gambler on the turf by the advice of blacklegs!
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