and unmeaning character of Man
into the more emphatic title of Freeman and Alderman. The claims of an
undefined humanity sit looser and looser upon him, at the same time that
he draws the bands of his new engagements closer and tighter about him.
He loses sight, by degrees, of all common sense and feeling in the petty
squabbles, intrigues, feuds, and airs of affected importance to which he
has made himself an accessory. He is quite an altered man. 'Really
the society were under considerable obligations to him in that last
business'; that is to say, in some paltry job or underhand attempt
to encroach upon the rights or dictate to the understandings of the
neighbourhood. In the meantime they eat, drink, and carouse together.
They wash down all minor animosities and unavoidable differences of
opinion in pint bumpers; and the complaints of the multitude are lost
in the clatter of plates and the roaring of loyal catches at every
quarter's meeting or mayor's feast. The town-hall reels with an unwieldy
sense of self-importance; 'the very stones prate' of processions; the
common pump creaks in concert with the uncorking of bottles and tapping
of beer-barrels: the market-cross looks big with authority. Everything
has an ambiguous, upstart, repulsive air. Circle within circle is
formed, an _imperium in imperio_: and the business is to exclude from
the first circle all the notions, opinions, ideas, interests, and
pretensions of the second. Hence there arises not only an antipathy
to common sense and decency in those things where there is a real
opposition of interest or clashing of prejudice, but it becomes a habit
and a favourite amusement in those who are 'dressed in a little brief
authority,' to thwart, annoy, insult, and harass others on all occasions
where the least opportunity or pretext for it occurs. Spite, bickerings,
back-biting, insinuations, lies, jealousies, nicknames are the order of
the day, and nobody knows what it's all about. One would think that the
mayor, aldermen, and liverymen were a higher and more select species of
animals than their townsmen; though there is no difference whatever but
in their gowns and staff of office! This is the essence of the _esprit
de corps_. It is certainly not a very delectable source of contemplation
or subject to treat of.

Public bodies are so far worse than the individuals composing them,
because the _official_ takes place of the _moral sense._ The nerves that
in themselves wer