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magistrates, though chosen annually from the ordinary classes of her citizens, are held in the highest reverence, and their laws are most punctually observed: but if her Lord Mayor, her Sheriffs, and her Aldermen, on their great public days of festival and magistracy, were to appear in their bob wigs and pantaloons instead of in their ancient magnificent robes of office, and if the splendid hospitalities of her Guildhall and Mansion-house were to be reduced to the common fare (and set out, as it is called) of an ordinary or a chop-house, it would soon be like Bartholomew Fair—the dishes would run the hazard of being carried off by the mob, and the guests, however noble, in their surtouts and overalls, would probably be hustled in the streets. On the same principle it is not, perhaps, a prudent retrenchment, and in point of value most contemptible, to abolish offices which from the most ancient times have been established, except when the very objects of them have become obsolete; it is like picking up the pavement and pulling down the palisades which keep off
