. The famous farce of _High Life below Stairs_ exposed with
great happiness the impudence and the delinquencies of the parti-coloured
clans. It roused them into the most barefaced opposition; and, as ever
happens to the few who press unjust claims on the many, in the result
worked the reform they so greatly dreaded.[A] One of the grievances in
society was then an anomalous custom, for it was only practised in our
country, of a guest being highly taxed in dining with a family whose
establishment admitted of a numerous train. Watchful of the departure of
the guest, this victim had to pass along a line of domestics, arranged in
the hall, each man presenting the visitor with some separate article, of
hat, gloves, coat and cane, claiming their "vails." It would not have been
safe to refuse even those who, with nothing to present, still held out the
hand, for their attentions to the diner-out.[B]

[Footnote A: The farce was produced in 1759, when it was the custom to
admit any servant in livery free to the upper gallery, as they were
supposed to be in attendance on their masters. Their foibles and
dishonesty being so completely hit off in the play incensed them greatly;
and they created such an uproar that it was resolved to exclude them in
future. In Edinburgh the opposition to the play produced still greater
scenes of violence, and the lives of some of the performers were
threatened. It at last became necessary for their masters to stop this
outbreak on the part of their servants; and alter the whole system of the
household economy which led to such results.--ED.]

[Footnote B: These _vails_, supposed to be the free gratuity of the
invited to the servants of the inviter, were ultimately so managed that
persons paid servants by that mode only--levying a kind of black-mail on
their friends, which ran through all society. "The wages are nothing,"
says a noble lady's servant in one of Smollet's novels, "but the _vails_
are enormous." The consequence was, that masters and mistresses had little
control over them; they are said in some instances to have paid for their
places, as some servants do at inns, where the situation was worth having,
owing to the large parties given, and gaming, then so prevalent, being
well-attended. It was ended by a mutual understanding all over the three
kingdoms, after the riots which resulted from the production of the play
noted above.--ED.]

When a slave was deemed not a person, but a thing market