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But I should have remembered, that the sentence against a woman, either for high or petty treason, is to be burnt alive. I shall now give some account of the election of the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, &c., who are chosen by a majority of the liverymen.
At length then have I liberty to yawn a freedom whereof doubtless my readers have long been liverymen: I have written myself and my inkstand dry as Rosamond's pond; my brain is relieved, recreated, emptied; I go no longer heavily, as one that mourneth; and with gleeful face can I assure you that your author's mind is once again as light as his heart: but when crowding fancies come thick upon it, they bow it, and break it, and weary it, as clouds of pigeons settling gregariously on a trans-Atlantic forest; and when those thronging thoughts are comfortably fixed on paper, one feels, as an apple-tree may be supposed to feel, all the difference between the heavy down-dragging crop of autumn and the winged aërial blossom of sweet spring-tide.
The official style of the court is, "A Meeting or Assembly of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Liverymen of the several Companies of the City of London in Common Hall assembled." The franchise is confined to liverymen of a year's standing, who have paid their livery fines in full, without receiving any drawback or allowance.
Indeed, my dear Sir, when I have before my eyes this consentient testimony of the corporation of the city of London, the West India merchants, and all the other merchants who promoted the other plans, struggling and contending which of them shall be permitted to lay out their money in consonance with their testimony, I cannot turn aside to examine what one or two violent petitions, tumultuously voted by real or pretended liverymen of London, may have said of the utter destruction and annihilation of trade.
This restriction is still in force; that is to say, the City of London, the richest and the greatest city in the world, now allows eight thousand liverymen, or members of the Companies, to elect their chief magistrate. Why do I tell over again this old threadbare tale?
In an address to the Liverymen he says that 'the disorders and great disturbance to the peace of the city, which in former times had been occasioned by the over-eagerness of some, too ambitious and impatient to obtain this great honour, had been quieted' by the adoption of the order of seniority. Gent. Mag. 1739, p. 595.
A man with a white elephant could probably travel from New York to San Francisco without disbursing a penny for the keeping of his animal. Farmers and even liverymen would keep and feed it on the way without charge. It is a good deal so with an automobile; it is still sufficiently a curiosity to command respect and attention.
There were in our capital rich traders, who were not liverymen. Towns shrank into villages. Villages swelled into cities larger than the London of the Plantagenets. Unhappily while the natural growth of society went on, the artificial polity continued unchanged. The ancient form of the representation remained; and precisely because the form remained, the spirit departed.
When the Alderman was elected, I addressed my brother Liverymen, and I boldly predicted that he was elected for life; that his conduct in the House of Commons would be such as would secure him a seat for the City of London, as long as human nature would enable him to attend his duty in Parliament.
This court now consists of the Lord Mayor or his deputy an alderman who has passed the chair four aldermen, and the liverymen of the companies who are also freemen. Their office is to elect the Lord Mayor, sheriffs, chamberlain, bridge-master, and auditors of the City and Bridge-house accounts, and the four ale-conners.
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