Page:Knight's Quarterly Magazine series 1 volume 3 (August–November 1824).djvu/161

 ThsThe [sic] glaziers were content with the existing state of things; only that they felt it their duty to complain of the police regulation against breaking the windows of those who refused to join in public illuminations: a regulation the more harsh, as it was well known that hail-storms had for many years sadly fallen off, and the present race of hail-stones were scandalously degenerating from their ancestors of the last generation. The bakers complained that their enemies had accused them of wishing to sell their bread at a higher price; which was a base insinuation; all they wished for was that they might diminish their loaves in size; and this, upon public grounds, was highly requisite: “fulness of bread” being notoriously the root of jacobinism, and under the present assize of bread, men ate so much bread that they did not know what the d they would be at. A course of small loaves would therefore be the best means of bringing them round to sound principles. To the bakers succeeded the projectors; the first of whom offered to make the town conduits and sewers navigable, if his highness would “lend him a thousand pounds.” The clergy of the city, whose sufferings had been great from the weekly scourgings which they and their works received from the town newspaper, called out clamorously for a literary censorship. On the other hand, the editor of the newspaper prayed for unlimited freedom of the press and abolition of the law of libel.

Certainly the Count Fitz-Hum must have had the happiest art of reconciling contradictions, and insinuating hopes into the most desperate cases; for the petitioners, one and all, quitted his presence delighted and elevated with hope. Possibly one part of his secret might lie in the peremptory injunction which he laid upon all the petitioners to observe the profoundest silence for the present upon his intentions in their favour.

The corporate bodies were now despatched: but such was the report of the Prince’s gracious affability, that the whole town kept crowding to the Commissioner’s house, and pressing for the honour of an audience. The Commissioner represented to the mob that his highness was made neither of steel nor of granite, and was at length worn out by the fatigues of the day. But to this every man answered—that what he had to say would be finished in two words, and could not add much to the Prince’s fatigue; and all kept their ground before the house as firm as a wall. In this emergency the Count Fitz-Hum resorted to a ruse. He sent round a servant from the back-door to mingle with the crowd, and proclaim that a mad dog was ranging about the streets, and had already bit many other dogs and several men. This answered; the cry of “mad dog” was set up; the mob flew asunder from