CHAPTER VIII. EARLY PART OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

Rugged and Tuff we see the forerunner of that line of champions of the ring which, commencing with Figg and Broughton, ran unbroken up to comparatively modern days. Other advertisements about this period relate to cock-matches and mains, sometimes specified to “last the week,” to bull-baiting in its ordinary and sometimes in its more cruel form of dressing up the beasts with fireworks, so as to excite both them and the savage dogs to their utmost. Perhaps brutality was never so rampant, or affected so many phases of society as it did in the first half of the eighteenth century. Slavery was considered a heaven-born institution, not alone as regards coloured races, for expeditions to the Plantations went on merrily and afforded excellent opportunities for the disposal of any one who happened to make himself objectionable by word or deed, or even by his very existence. The wicked uncle with an eye on the family property had a very good time then, and the rightful heir was often doomed to a slavery almost worse than death. Apropos of slavery, we may as well quote a very short advertisement which shows how the home trade flourished in 1728. It is from the Daily Journal of September 28:—