By industry and economy in early life, he
obtained the means of erecting, solely on his own
account, one of those ingenious manufactories for
which Fifeshire is justly celebrated. From the
day on which the industrious artisan first took his
seat at the Council Board, he attended so much
to the interests of the little privileged community
that civic honours were conferred on him as rapidly
as the Set of the Royalty* could legally admit.
* The Constitution of the Borough.
To have the right of walking to church on holyday,
preceded by a phalanx of halberdiers, in habiliments
fashioned as in former times, seems, in
the eyes of many a guild brother, to be a very
enviable pitch of worldly grandeur. Few persons
were ever more proud of civic honours than the
Thane of Fife, but he knew well how to turn his
political influence to the best account. The council,
court, and other business of the burgh, occupied
much of his time, which caused him to intrust the
management of his manufactory to a near relation
whose name was D*******, a young man of dissolute
habits; but the Thane, seeing at last, that
by continuing that extravagant person in that
charge, his affairs would, in all probability, fall into
a state of bankruptcy, applied to the member of
Parliament for that district to obtain a situation
for his relation in the civil department of the
state.
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