liked either the trouble or the responsibility of the office, but
he thought it was a dignity to which he was well entitled, and
that it had been withheld from him by malice prepense. But there
is an old and true Scotch proverb, 'Fools should not have chapping
sticks'; that is, weapons of offence. Mr. Bertram was no sooner
possessed of the judicial authority which he had so much longed
for than he began to exercise it with more severity than mercy,
and totally belied all the opinions which had hitherto been formed
of his inert good-nature. We have read somewhere of a justice of
peace who, on being nominated in the commission, wrote a letter to
a bookseller for the statutes respecting his official duty in the
following orthography--'Please send the ax relating to a gustus
pease.' No doubt, when this learned gentleman had possessed
himself of the axe, he hewed the laws with it to some purpose. Mr.
Bertram was not quite so ignorant of English grammar as his
worshipful predecessor; but Augustus Pease himself could not have
used more indiscriminately the weapon unwarily put into his hand.

In good earnest, he considered the commission with which he had
been entrusted as a personal mark of favour from his sovereign;
forgetting that he had formerly thought his being deprived of a
privilege, or honour, common to those of his rank was the result
of mere party cabal. He commanded his trusty aid-de-camp, Dominie
Sampson, to read aloud the commission; and at the first words,
'The King has been pleased to appoint'--'Pleased!' he exclaimed
in a transport of gratitude; 'honest gentleman! I'm sure he cannot
be better pleased than I am.'

Accordingly, unwilling to confine his gratitude to mere feelings
or verbal expressions, he gave full current to the new-born zeal