so
far above the ordinaries of his day and generation; indeed, the
generality of mankind may claim this as a duty; for the conduct of public
men, as it has been often wisely said, is a species of public property,
and their rules and observances have in all ages been considered things
of a national concernment. I have therefore well weighed the importance
it may be of to posterity, to know by what means I have thrice been made
an instrument to represent the supreme power and authority of Majesty in
the royal burgh of Gudetown, and how I deported myself in that honour and
dignity, so much to the satisfaction of my superiors in the state and
commonwealth of the land, to say little of the great respect in which I
was held by the townsfolk, and far less of the terror that I was to evil-
doers. But not to be over circumstantial, I propose to confine this
history of my life to the public portion thereof, on the which account I
will take up the beginning at the crisis when I first entered into
business, after having served more than a year above my time, with the
late Mr Thomas Remnant, than whom there was not a more creditable man in
the burgh; and he died in the possession of the functionaries and
faculties of town-treasurer, much respected by all acquainted with his
orderly and discreet qualities.

Mr Remnant was, in his younger years, when the growth of luxury and
prosperity had not come to such a head as it has done since, a tailor
that went out to the houses of the adjacent lairds and country gentry,
whereby he got an inkling of the policy of the world, that could not have
been gathered in any other way by a man of his station and degree of
life. In process of time he came to be in a settled way, and when I was
bound 'prentice to him, he had three regular journeymen and a cloth shop.
It was therefore not so much for learning the tailoring, as to get an
insight in the conformity between the traffic of the shop and the board
that I was bound to him, being destined by my parents for the profession
appertaining to the former, and to conjoin thereto something of the
mercery and haberdashery: my uncle, that had been a sutler in the army
along with General Wolfe, who made a conquest of Quebec, having left me a
legacy of three hundred pounds because I was called after him, the which
legacy was a consideration for to set me up in due season in some genteel
business.

Accordingly, as I have narrated, when I had passed a year o