an Old Friend And a New Face.

an Old Friend And a New Face.

To the Editor of the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette.

Sir,

You will oblige me by inserting the following in your paper, which may be amusing to some of your readers:

It is a fact well known that when the subscription coaches started, in the year 1812, William Hanning, Esq., a magistrate of the county of Somerset, residing near Ilminster, was a strenuous advocate for their support, and it was in great measure owing to his exertions that they were established. This gentleman, from some motive or other, or perhaps from his known fondness for new speculations, is now the avowed supporter of a new coach, called, above all other names, the Defiance, and it is professedly meant as an opposition to the subscription coaches. It started from Exeter for the first time on Sunday, April 13th, 1823. One really would have supposed that under such patronage a name better calculated to keep the peace of his Majesty’s liege subjects, and to preserve harmony and good-will among men, would have been adopted for this coach, and that some other day might have been selected for its first appearance. However, the Defiance started on the Sunday afternoon, amidst the shouts and imprecations of guards, coachmen, and ostlers, contending one against the other, and having one ill-looking outside passenger, whose name was Revenge.