THE KING OF THE CITY.
Some new lights have been thrown on the position of the Lord Mayor by the evidence given before the Corporation Commission which is now sitting. The Lord Mayor seems to be a mixture of degradation and dignity—a species of civic Centaur—a kind of neither one thing nor the other, or rather a sort of both—a combination of the flunkey and the potentate, which it would be difficult to analyse. At the Mansion House dinner he is a Monarch, but at the Coronation banquet he is a Butler, in virtue of which menial occupation he takes a golden tankard home to clean, and then claiming it as a perquisite, he never brings it back again. Why the Lord Mayor should appropriate a bit of the plate because he is acting as Butler, is as much a mystery to us, as it would be if the man we paid to wait when we give a dinner-party were to walk off with our best piece of plate—our sugar-tongs, which are real, all the rest being electro—under the paltry subterfuge of its being a "perquisite." We can only say that if the Lord Mayor were to be stopped on his way from the Coronation banquet with the golden tankard in his pocket or under his arm, it would require nothing short of the production of the original charter, to satisfy the police that he had lawful possession of the property.
It appears also that the Lord Mayor is a Privy Councillor, but is so completely cut in that capacity that he is never summoned to attend, and the probability is, that if his Lordship were to present himself for admission he would have the door shut in his face by the "proper officers." It is, however, inconvenient that those dignities should nominally attach to an individual who is not permitted to use them, and we can only compliment those who have held the office of Lord Mayor, on their good sense in not bringing on an unseemly altercation with the royal porters and door-keepers, by attempting to "get in" when a Privy Council is sitting. There is no doubt that if "his Lordship" were to force a passage up into the Council Chamber, and attempt to take his seat at the Board, there would be a general cry of "turn him out" from the Cabinet Members. The absurdity of the situation is so apparent, and the incongruity of the Lord Mayor at the Privy Council is so striking, that nobody can doubt the propriety of abolishing a nominal position, which only subjects its holder to ridicule.
The only real power that is still exercised by the Lord Mayor is the right of shutting up Temple Bar when the Sovereign is expected; but since the side bar has been rented by a loyal hair-dresser, who would assuredly let the monarch through his shop—if any serious obstacle were to be offered by the civic authorities—it is high time that even this dim branch of the civic prerogative were lopped off by the axe of Improvement, that judicious woodsman, who spares nothing superfluous.