CENTRALIZATION IN THE CITY.
Whatever may be the nature of the thinking principle of man, there is no doubt that the soul of business, Punctuality, is material. This psychological truth has been judiciously recognised in the practical philosophy of the City of London, which has devised a method of insuring the virtue in question, based on a profound conviction of its materiality. Of Committees for General Purposes, Mr. Thomas Rogers, in evidence before the Corporation Commission, stated that
"In order to induce Members to attend punctually the Chairman waits five minutes. At the expiration of that time he drops his hammer, and then all who are present have a right to dine with the Committee, but all who come after the five minutes are excluded from the dinner."
No doubt the attendance is generally full—at the commencement of the proceedings as well as after the subsequent repast. But in case the majority of the members are behind time, do the minority eat up the dinner provided for the whole number? Should the persons present at the fall of the hammer amount to just thirteen, does the popular superstition, that objects to a baker's dozen at the mahogany, prevent them from sitting down to table in a party of that number? If so, does one gentleman retire, or is one more taken in from the excluded set, and is the fortunate, or unfortunate, individual selected by lot? These are questions that suggest themselves to most thinking minds, though they did not occur to those of the Commissioners.
"Domine Dirige Nos" ought no longer to be the civic motto. Considering their characteristic principle of managing matters by appealing to the centre of the human system, the stomach, a better motto for the Corporation would be "Medio tutissimus ibis."