The Liverpool Standard, and General Advertiser. — 1854-11-14 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

MODEL CABMAN.--The other night James Lomas, a cabman, received half. a-sovereign from his fare, in mistake, which he duly returned next day to his employer, Mr. Hamer, stating from whom he had it. We believe that Lomas, who has been 10 years in Mr. fiamer's employ, has been frequently known to do similar acts. Some little while ago, one of xiur merchants, residing in Aigburth, had a sovereign returned him by Lomas which had been given him in like manner by mistake. ' Such traits of honesty in a class who are too often known as affording examples of an opposite line of conduct, cannot have too much publicity, inasmuch as it gives an ex— cellent incentive to others to follow the like example." •  -- Lomas is really a much greater man than the majority of those of whom likenesses are made in wax, or even in marble. In any well-ordered collection of images, molten or graven, his figure would be placed in a high position. His bust would be put along with the good heads ; and not in the same row with Courvoisier and Daniel Good. At what a height it would be classed above the Emperor of Russia's ! That, indeed, could not be suffered to stand on the rank of common cabmen ; fellows who are guilty of mere extortion and insolence, and not of absolute robbery : much less of murder. It would have to be ranged with that of_ Nero, _and the casts of Burke, and Bishop, and Williams; differing frOm these only in wanting—for the present—perhaps only for the present—a certain groove around the neck.  Why compare the Emperor Nicholas with Lomas, the Cabman ? Because, the comparison between the two individuals, conspicuous at the same moment, is natural. Nicholas and Lomas appear in the papers together : both remarkable; one as au honest man, the other as a villain; Lomas with his twenty years of good character, and good life : Nicholas with his more than twenty years of infamy, and evil reign. Lomas is the greater man. He has more in him of that which constitutes man. All the magnitude of Nicholas consists in what is bestial. If a boa-constrictor were endowed with a little intellect, and had great power given it over men, the reptile would act just as the Czar does : that Russian serpent, whose head is in the Baltic, and tail in the Black Sea, whence, unless it is chopped off there, it will coil round Europe. Ascend, mentally, towards Heaven, some little way higher than you can soar in a balloon : then look down at Lomas restoring the coin, and at Nicholas trying to seize the territory, which, respectively, did not belong to them. Then see which is the finer thing. Observe, as you rise, how the acts of the two men come more and more largely into moral contrast. How, by degrees, all the greatness of the Czar's rascally enterprise, as apparent to the eyes of snob and flunkey, decreases. The thunder of the cannon gets fainter and fainter till you cease to hear it, the deathfires dwindle to sparks, and the glimmer of a rushlight. But the act of which the noise and blaze are accessories remains neither more nor less than an attempt at burglary, aceonipanied with murder. As the planet beneath you grows more and more like a star, the crime gets divested of all the dignity which it derives, in that planet, from affecting a large part of it ; loses all the importance attaching to the robbery which is extensive : and appears as petty as any larceny that does not arise from want, and pettier than that. On the other hand the upright conduct of Lomas in creases in magnitude as you regard it from higher regions. You see the half-sovereign not in its proportion to the riches of the Bank of England, but in its relation to the  earnings of a cabman. It then seems a great enough thing to part with : and you perceive that, as a work of indefinite charity was done by a widow, with a mite, so may a considerable act of justice be performed by a cab ten-shilling piece