he inn accommodation
of Edinburgh, furnished by Captain Topham, who visited Edinburgh in
1774: "On my first arrival, my companion and self, after the fatigue of
a long day's journey, were landed at one of these stable-keepers (for
they have modesty enough to give themselves no higher denomination) in a
part of the town called the Pleasance; and, on entering the house, we
were conducted by a poor devil of a girl, without shoes or stockings,
and with only a single linsey-woolsey petticoat which just reached
half-way to her ankles, into a room where about twenty Scotch drovers
had been regaling themselves with whisky and potatoes. You may guess our
amazement when we were informed that this was the best inn in the
metropolis--that we could have no beds unless we had an inclination to
sleep together, and in the same room with the company which a
stage-coach had that moment discharged."

Before proceeding further, let us look at some of the circumstances
which were characteristic of the period with which we are dealing.
Liberty of the subject and public opinion are inseparably wedded
together, and this seems inevitable in every country whose government
partakes largely of the representative system. For in such States,
unlike the conditions which obtain under despotic governments, the laws
are formulated and amended in accordance with the views held for the
time being by _the people_, the Government merely acting as the agency
through which the people's will is declared. And this being so, what is
called the Liberty of the subject must be that limited and circumscribed
freedom allowed by the people collectively, as expressed in the term
"public opinion," to the individual man. In despotic States the
circumstances are necessarily different, and such States may be excluded
from the present consideration.

Wherever there is wanting a quick and universal exchange of thought
there can be no sound public opinion. Where hindrances are placed upon
the free exchange of views, either by heavy duties on newspapers, by
dear postage, or by slow communications, public opinion must be a plant
of low vitality and slow growth. Consequently, in the age preceding that
of steam, so far as applied to locomotion, and to the telegraph, which
age extended well into the present century, there was no rapid exchange
of thought; new ideas were of slow propagation; there was little of that
intellectual friction so productive of intellectual light among t