"
At this institution the taxes, as will better appear in the
Corollary, were abated about one-half, which made the order, when
it came to be tasted, to be of good relish with the people in the
very beginning; though the advantages then were no ways
comparable to the consequences to be hereafter shown.
Nevertheless, my Lord Epimonus, who with much ado had been held
till now, found it midsummer moon, and broke out of bedlam in
this manner.
"MY LORD ARCHON:
"I have a singing in my head like that of a cart-wheel, my
brains are upon a rotation; and some are so merry, that a man
cannot speak his griefs, but if your high-shod prerogative, and
those same slouching fellows your tribunes, do not take my lord
strategus's and my lord orator's heads, and jolt them together
under the canopy, then let me be ridiculous to all posterity. For
here is a commonwealth, to which if a man should take that of the
'prentices in their ancient administration of justice at
Shrovetide, it were an aristocracy. You have set the very rabble
with truncheons in their hands, and the gentry of this nation,
like cocks with scarlet gills, and the golden combs of their
salaries to boot, lest they should not be thrown at.
"Not a night can I sleep for some horrid apparition or other;
one while these myrmidons are measuring silks by their
quarterstaves, another stuffing their greasy pouches with my lord
high treasurer's jacobuses.
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