Lord Mayor

“ All that remains of the lord mayor’s show, to remind the curiously informed of its ancient character, is in the first part of the procession, wherein the poor men of the company to which the lord mayor belongs, or persons hired to represent them, are habited in long gowns and close caps of the company’s colour, and bear painted shields on their arms, but without javelins. ”

“ I HAVE often mentioned to you an earnest desire I had, and still have, to record the merit and services of the lord mayor, Humphrey French; whom I often desired, after his mayoralty, to give me an account of many passages that happened in his mayoralty, and which he has often put off, on the pretence of his forgetfulness, but in reality of his modesty: I take him to be a hero in his kind, and that he ought to be imitated by all his successors, as far as their genius can reach. ”

“ The Lord Mayor is a very grand person indeed. He is the head of the City, and a new Lord Mayor is chosen every year. There are other big buildings around near the Bank, and just here seven streets meet, and there is an open space. ”

“ The recorder made a speech to the livery-men, 'apprising them of the custom and manner of choosing a lord mayor; which, he observed, was for the Common Hall to nominate two of the aldermen who had served sheriffs, to the Court of Aldermen, who had then a right to elect either of them into that great office, and which ever that the court so fixed on, the Common Hall was bound to accept.' When he had ended, the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen retired into the Council Chamber, and left us to preside at the election, attended by the Common Sergeant and other officers. ”

“ However, the Lord MAYOR improved the occasion, which we dare say judging from the liberal hospitality, or, in this instance hoss-pitality, of the Fishmongering Corporation, scarcely required improvement, to inform His Grace of BEAUFORT and other noble sportsmen that he too was a hunting man, and that Lord Mayors of London ought as a rule to he hunting men if they would keep up the ancient traditions of their office. ”

“ Mayor lives while he is Lord Mayor, and here he gives great banquets. Sometimes the King and Queen come to lunch with him, and all the great people from abroad who visit England go to see the Lord Mayor. When the King makes a procession through London in state he is met at Temple Bar, where the City begins, by the Lord Mayor, who hands him the keys of the City ”

“ The Lord Mayor elect is attended to the Chancellor's private residence by the aldermen, sheriffs, under-sheriffs, the swordbearers, and all the City officers. In the evening he gives his first state dinner, in robes and full-dressed. ”

“ After the swearing in at Guildhall, when the Mayor publicly takes the oaths, accepts the sword, the mace, the sceptre, and the City purse, he proceeds with the late Mayor to the Mansion House, and they conjointly give what is called the 'farewell dinner;' the Lord Mayor elect proceeding to his own private residence in the evening, a few days being allowed for the removal of the late Lord Mayor. ”

“ In 1642 he was elected lord mayor of London, but retained his seat in parliament by special leave of the Commons, and he was elected lord mayor for a second term in the following year, continuing while in office to raise large sums of money for the opposition to the Court party. ”

“ The feeble efforts of a worn out man to serve them can never answer their sanguine expectations. I will do my best, and will sacrifice ease and retirement, the chief comfort of old age, to their wishes. I do accept the office of lord [Pg 91] mayor. I shall hope for the assistance of your Lordship and my brethren the Court of Aldermen. ”

“ Common Crier, whose duty it is to attend his lordship with the mace to the courts of aldermen and common council, common halls, and courts of hustings: he is in waiting every Tuesday and Thursday; and whenever the lord mayor wears his scarlet robes, attends him with the mace. His dress is a damask gown and counsellor’s wig: he had apartments at Aldersgate. ”

“ Six [pg 332] aldermen and a number of representatives from the livery companies were deputed to attend to the city's ordnance.989 The mayor was to be allowed twelve armed men in addition to his usual suite, and the sheriffs forty sergeants and forty valets in order to assist them in keeping the peace within the city. Communication was to be kept up at least once in the day between the mayor and the Lord Chancellor. ”

“ You must know that the corporation of our town have lately elected a new mayor, a person of many qualifications—big and portly, with a voice like Boanerges; a religious man, the possessor of an immense pew; loyal, so much so that I once heard him say that he would at any time go three miles to hear any one sing "God save the King"; moreover, a giver of excellent dinners. Such is our present mayor; who, owing to his loyalty, his religion, and a little, perhaps, to his dinners, is a mighty favourite ”

“ The mayor, or his deputy, appointed under his hand and seal, or in case of the mayor's death, the surviving justice of the peace, who last served the office of mayor, shall be the presiding officer at every election of mayor, sheriffs, aldermen, and common council-men, and of such scrutinies as shall be demanded thereupon. ”

“ But I am completely in sympathy with the purpose of the Citizens' Union to secure a Mayor for the great city who shall be 'free from all partisan obligations.' Such a Mayor, if elected, I shall certainly be. In making appointments it shall be my endeavor to fill every place with an eye single to the public good. The patronage of the city shall not be used, so far as it is in the Mayor's power to prevent it, for the purpose of either strengthening or weakening one party or another, or any fraction of any party. ”

“ Let us make our own selections—or, rather, help our mayor to make hers—and show this town what can be done with an honest and sane council, every man of whom has at heart the framing of a model municipality and the development of an ideal city. ”

“ He is just taking up the paper again when the door from the hall is opened, and the manservant TOPPING, dried, dark, sub-humorous, in a black cut-away, announces:
TOPPING. The Mayor, Sir, and Mr Harris!
THE MAYOR of Breconridge enters, He is clean-shaven, red-faced, light-eyed, about sixty, shrewd, poll-parroty, naturally jovial, dressed with the indefinable wrongness of a burgher; he is followed by his Secretary HARRIS, a man all eyes and cleverness. TOPPING retires.
BUILDER. [Rising] Hallo, Mayor! What brings you so early? ”

“ Still, if Newgate's doom'd to go,
Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor,
To the Carliol Croft—heigh-ho!
Mr. Mayor,
As sure as you're alive,
(And long, sir, may you thrive,)
The shock we'll ne'er survive,
Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor. ”

“ This was nineteen years ago, but it makes a pretty good platform in municipal politics even to-day—smash corruption, take the municipal service out of the domain of politics, insist upon having a Mayor who shall be a workingman's Mayor even more than a business man's Mayor, and devote all attention possible to the welfare of the children. ”

“ All men have their ambitions—Abraham's one ambition since boyhood had been to wear the mayoral chain, the mayoral robes, to sit in the mayoral seat, to be the chief magistrate of his adopted town, to know himself its foremost burgess, to have everybody's cap raised to him, to have himself addressed by high and low as Mr. Mayor. ”

“ Madame Guibert will have to be told.”
“I don’t deny it. Only it isn’t necessary that you should put yourself out about it. A Mayor is not at everybody’s beck and call. When a Mayor bestirs himself it is the State which acts. You send a deputy, or even a councillor, where enemies of the Republic are concerned. Devil take it! One is either a republican or one isn’t, Mr. Mayor!”
“Mélanie, fetch us a pint!” cried the Mayor, torn between his natural duty and his duty as a republican which was being instilled into him. “And send the boy to look for Randon, Pitet, and Détraz.” ”

“ CHAPTER II. The Mayor is so protected that be cannot help himself.
A commotion without,—a kind of howl, a kind of hoot. Mr. Williams, the warehousemen, the tanners, Mike Callaghan, share between them the howl and the hoot. The Mayor started: is it possible! His door is burst open, and, scattering all who sought to hold him back,—scattering them to the right and left from his massive torso in rushed the man who had taken in the Mayor,—the fellow with one eye, and with that fellow, shaggy and travel-soiled, the other dog! ”

“ But on the other hand, the Aldermen shewed by many reasons, that unto them belongs the election of Mayor, both because they, the Aldermen are the heads, as it were, and the populace the limbs, as also because it is the Aldermen who pronounce judgments in pleas moved within the City. Of the populace on the other hand there are many who have neither lands, rents, nor dwellings in the City, being sons of divers mothers, some of them of servile station, and all of them caring little or nothing about the City’s welfare. ”

“ I met remarkable men in the mayors and provosts and the leading citizens connected with municipal affairs, and each community had its own individual stamp and its problems, successes, and failures. There was generally one greatly desired improvement overshadowing all other questions engrossing the attention [Pg 315] of the people. Each was a little world in itself. The City Council is a Cabinet in miniature and the Mayor the Prime Minister. Domestic politics keep the people agog. Foreign relations are not wanting. ”

“ On the morrow my brother departed with the painter for the old town, and there the painter painted the mayor. I did not see the picture for a great many years, when, chancing to be at the old town, I beheld it.
The original mayor was a mighty, portly man, with a bull’s head, black hair, body like that of a dray horse, and legs and thighs corresponding; a man six foot high at the least. ”

“ The Mayor was a simple man who had passed his whole life in obscurity, and was bewildered by finding himself an important actor in a mighty revolution. The events of the last twenty-four hours, and the perilous state of the city which was under his charge, had disordered his mind and his body. When the great man, at whose frown, a few days before, the whole kingdom had trembled, was, dragged into the justice room begrimed with ashes, half dead with fright, and followed by a raging multitude, the agitation of the unfortunate Mayor rose to the height. ”

“ Mayor.—"Well, I guess you speak handsome, sir. But you'd be glad to have two members to support Ministers after the next election."
Mr. Egerton, smiling.—"Unquestionably, Mr. Mayor."
Mr. Mayor.—"And I can do it, Mr. Egerton. I may say I have the town in my pocket; so I ought, I spend a great deal of money in it. Now, you see, Mr. Egerton, I have passed a part of my life in a land of liberty—the United States—and I come to the point when I speak to a man of the world. I'm a man of the world myself, sir. ”

“ ADMINISTRATIVE DUTIES OF THE MAYOR.—The mayor stands at the head of the city administration, but the extent of his control varies from city to city. In the last half century the decline in popular favor of the city council has been accompanied by a growing tendency to enlarge the administrative powers of the mayor. In many of the smaller cities the mayor is still little more than a presiding officer of the council. In such cities subordinate executive officials are usually chosen by popular vote or are appointed by the council. ”

“ Low as the first Mayor of our great new city one who will reflect credit and honor upon the community, who will conduct its government firmly on the lines of decency and order, and whose election and administration will be for years to come the highest vindication of the right of self-government by enlightened, intelligent American people. ”

“ The mayor to be chosen out of the eight Magistrates that are free-men; and also with sending two Members, to sit as their Representatives in Parliament, who are to be chosen by the Mayor, Magistrates, and Freemen, or the major part of them; by election of which, if common fame be true, the townsmen have in the last ages reaped great gain and advantage. ”

“ The city is provided with 3 commodious and handsome market houses, each of which is the centre of a busy trade.—The government is vested in a mayor, a common council comprising 26 members, 2 from each of the 13 wards, a comptroller, city attorney, street commissioner, treasurer, superintendent of education, city engineer, overseer of the poor, and 3 assessors, all of whom are elected by the people for a term of two years. ”

“ The corporate authority of said city shall be vested in one principal officer, styled the 'mayor;' in one board of aldermen, consisting of two members from each ward, who, with the mayor, shall be denominated the common council. ”

“ Mayor."
"Well, we can differ without disagreein', sir. Besides," he added, with something like a wink, "customers differ too."
"Most true."
"Business is business, sir, especially with a growin' fam'ly. I always think of my fam'ly, Mr. Hume, and how I should leave 'em if I was took—taken."
"A man's first duty, Mr. Mayor."
"You wouldn't catch me goin' on like this young Roberts."
"Why, what's he been up to now?" asked Philip uneasily.
"You aint seen the Standard, sir?" The Mayor, of course, meant the East Denshire Standard, not the London paper of the same name. ”

“ What would we give to hear them tell the tale of all they have seen and heard go on, since first the royal charter granted to our citizens the long-sought privilege of a real bona fide mayor! how, at first this dignitary used to sit in solemn majesty upon his throne of state, surrounded by his aristocracy of chosen peers, deliberating gravely on the affairs of their little state; how, reverently and orderly the subordinate commons used to come into their presence at their bidding, and do as they were told by the supreme authorities ”