chon (as I was saying) these are to signify
to you the true-heartedness and goodwill which are in the people, seeing
by joining with you, as one man, they confess that all they have to give
is too little for his highness. For truly fathers, if he who is able to
do harm, and does none, may well be called honest; what shall we say to
my Lord Archon's highness, who having had it in his power to have done
us the greatest mischief that ever befell a poor nation, so willing
to trust such as they thought well of, has done us so much good, as
we should never have known how to do ourselves? Which was so sweetly
delivered by my Lord Chancellor Phosphorus to the people, that I dare
say there was never a one of them could forbear to do as I do-and, it
please your fatherhoods, they be tears of joy. Aye, my Lord Archon shall
walk the streets (if it be for his ease I mean) with a switch, while the
people run after him and pray for him; he shall not wet his foot; they
will strew flowers in his way; he shall sit higher in their hearts,
and in the judgment of all good men, than the kings that go upstairs
to their seats; and one of these had as good pull two or three of his
fellows out of their great chairs as wrong him or meddle with him; he
has two or three hundred thousand men, that when you say the word, shall
sell themselves to their shirts for him, and die at his foot. His pillow
is of down, and his grave shall be as soft, over which they that are
alive shall wring their hands. And to come to your fatherhoods, most
truly so called, as being the loving parents of the people, truly you
do not know what a feeling they have of your kindness, seeing you are so
bound up, that if there comes any harm, they may thank themselves. And,
alas! poor souls, they see that they are given to be of so many minds,
that though they always mean well, yet if there comes any good, they
may thank them that teach them better. Wherefore there was never such a
thing as this invented, they do verily believe that it is no other than
the same which they always had in their very heads, if they could
have but told how to bring it out. As now for a sample: my lords the
proposers had no sooner said your minds, than they found it to be that
which heart could wish. And your fatherhoods may comfort yourselves,
that there is not a people in the world more willing to learn what is
for their own good, nor more apt to see it, when you have showed it
them. Wherefore they do l