There is a score of kings in a committee, as in the relics
of the cross there is the number of twenty. This is the giant with the
hundred hands that wields the sceptre; the tyrannical bead-roll by which
the kingdom prays backward, and at every curse drops a committee-man.
Let Charles be waived whose condescending clemency aggravates the
defection, and make Nero the question, better a Nero than a committee.
There is less execution by a single bullet than by case-shot.
Now a committee-man is a parti-coloured officer. He must be drawn like
Janus with cross and pile in his countenance, as he relates to the
soldiers or faces about to his fleecing the country. Look upon him
martially, and he is a justice of war, one that hath bound his Dalton up
in buff, and will needs be of the Quorum to the best commanders. He is
one of Mars his lay-elders; he shares in the government, though a
Nonconformist to his bleeding rubric. He is the like sectary in arms, as
the Platonic is in love, keeps a fluttering in discourse, but proves a
haggard in the action. He is not of the soldiers and yet of his flock.
It is an emblem of the golden age (and such indeed he makes it to him)
when so tame a pigeon may converse with vultures. Methinks a committee
hanging about a governor, and bandileers dangling about a furred
alderman, have an anagram resemblance. There is no syntax between a cap
of maintenance and a helmet. Who ever knew an enemy routed by a grand
jury and a _Billa vera?_ It is a left-handed garrison where their
authority perches; but the more preposterous the more in fashion, the
right hand fights while the left rules the reins.
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