After the surrender at Newark,
Cleveland depended upon friendship of cavaliers who gave him hospitality
for his witty companionship, and the good scholarship that made him
valuable as a tutor to their sons, Cleveland, who lives among our poets,
wrote in the first days of his trouble these three prose Characters:--_
THE CHARACTER OF A COUNTRY COMMITTEE-MAN, WITH THE EAR-MARK. OF A
SEQUESTRATOR.
A committee-man by his name should be one that is possessed, there is
number enough in it to make an epithet for legion. He is _persona in
concreto_ (to borrow the solecism of a modern statesman). You may
translate it by the Red Bull phrase, and speak as properly, Enter seven
devils _solus_. It is a well-trussed title that contains both the number
and the beast; for a committee-man is a noun of multitude, he must be
spelled with figures, like Antichrist wrapped in a pair-royal of sixes.
Thus the name is as monstrous as the man, a complex notion of the same
lineage with accumulative treason. For his office it is the Heptarchy,
or England's fritters; it is the broken meat of a crumbling prince, only
the royalty is greater; for it is here, as in the miracle of loaves, the
voider exceeds the bill of fare. The Pope and he ring the changes; here
is the plurality of crowns to one head, join them together and there is
a harmony in discord. The triple-headed turnkey of heaven with the
triple-headed porter of hell. A committee-man is the relics of regal
government, but, like holy relics, he outbulks the substance whereof he
is a remnant.
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