e conceived that I cannot be acquainted with all its various
duties. But I can assure you it shall be my study to understand their
nature, and my earnest endeavour to fulfil them in such a manner as to
justify my fellow-citizens in the choice they have made. Although I
cannot pretend to say that I will do what your late Sheriffs have
done, still less to surpass them in their efforts to be useful, yet I
hope, so far, to imitate their example as to show my anxiety to
transmit to my successors the functions of my office unimpaired in
their usefulness, and its privileges undiminished in their value.
Believing that it is not a political office, and yet that it has
duties both to the Queen and to the public, I hope, in the execution
of those duties, to swerve neither to the right nor the left, but on
the one hand to uphold the rightful prerogatives of the Crown, and on
the other to support the just liberties of the people. Called upon by
the free, intelligent, and wealthy citizens of this great city to fill
so important an office, I trust that I shall never be found wanting in
any efforts to prove that the great privilege of electing their own
Sheriffs may be safely entrusted to the people. May I add that in
choosing the humble individual before you to fill so important an
office, they have shown that private character, when based on
integrity, will secure public honour and respect? Nor is it less
gratifying to find that, though professing a different faith from the
major it of my fellow-citizens, yet this has presented no barrier to
my desire of being useful to them in a situation to which my
forefathers would in vain have aspired; and I hail this as a proof
that those prejudices are passing away, and will pass away, which
prevent our feelings from being as widely social, as just, as
comprehensive in their effect as the most amiable and best-instructed
mind can desire. Nor can I forget, while alluding to kindly feelings,
how much I am indebted to those friends who, unasked and unsolicited,
proposed and elected me to the office which now gives me the
opportunity of addressing you. To them, to you, to the Livery at
large, I again tender my thanks, and I beg to assure you that,
whatever may be necessary to enhance the high, respectability of my
office, to support its splendour, to maintain its rights, to add to
its honour, and to make it more useful to my fellow-citizens--if it
can be made more useful--I will attempt, and with y