ance--yea, gentlemen in the East and West
Indies--would send their children to be educated among us, by which,
great fame and profit would redound to the town.

Nothing could be more plausibly set forth; and certainly the project, as
a notion, had many things to recommend it; but we had no funds adequate
to undertake it; so, on the score of expense, knowing, as I did, the
state of the public income, I thought it my duty to oppose it _in toto_;
which fired Mr Plan to such a degree, that he immediately insinuated that
I had some end of my own to serve in objecting to his scheme; and because
the wall that it was proposed to big round the moderate building, which
we were contemplating, would inclose a portion of the backside of my new
steading at the Westergate, he made no scruple of speaking, in a
circumbendibus manner, as to the particular reasons that I might have for
preferring it to his design, which he roused, in his way, as more worthy
of the state of the arts and the taste of the age.

It was not easy to sit still under his imputations; especially as I could
plainly see that some of the other members of the council leant towards
his way of thinking. Nor will I deny that, in preferring the more
moderate design, I had a contemplation of my own advantage in the matter
of the dyke; for I do not think it any shame to a public man to serve his
own interests by those of the community, when he can righteously do so.

It was a thing never questionable, that the school-house required the
inclosure of a wall, and the outside of that wall was of a natural
necessity constrained to be a wing of inclosure to the ground beyond.
Therefore, I see not how a corrupt motive ought to have been imputed to
me, merely because I had a piece of ground that marched with the spot
whereon it was intended to construct the new building; which spot, I
should remark, belonged to the town before I bought mine. However, Mr
Plan so worked upon this material, that, what with one thing and what
with another, he got the council persuaded to give up the moderate plan,
and to consent to sell the ground where it had been proposed to build the
new school, and to apply the proceeds towards the means of erecting a
fine academy on the Green.

It was not easy to thole to be so thwarted, especially for such an
extravagant problem, by one so new to our councils and deliberations. I
never was more fashed in my life; for having hitherto, in all my plans
for the