University of Virginia Library

The Grand Council of New-Amsterdam—with Reasons
why an Alderman should be Fat.

To assist the doubtful Wouter in the arduous business of
legislation, a board of magistrates was appointed, which
presided immediately over the police. This potent body
consisted of a schout or bailiff, with powers between those
of the present mayor and sheriff; five burgermeesters, who
were equivalent to aldermen; and five schepens, who officiated
as scrubs, sub-devils, or bottle-holders, to the burgermeesters,
in the same manner as do assistant alderman
to their principals at the present day—it being their duty
to fill the pipes of the lordly burgermeesters, hunt the
markets for delicacies for corporation dinners, and to discharge
such other little offices of kindness, as were occasionally
required. It was, moreover, tacitly understood,
though not specifically enjoined, that they should consider
themselves as butts for the blunt wits of the burgermeesters,
and should laugh most heartily at all their
jokes; but this last was a duty as rarely called in action
in those days as it is at present, and was shortly remitted,
in consequence of the tragical death of a fat little schepen,

who actually died of suffocation in an unsuccessful effort
to force a laugh at one of burgermeester Van Zandt's
best jokes.

In return for these humble services, they were permitted
to say, yes and no at the council board, and to have that
enviable privilege, the run of the public kitchen; being
graciously permitted to eat, and drink, and smoke, at all
those snug junkettings, and public gormandizings, for
which the ancient magistrates were equally famous with
their more modern successors. The post of schepen, therefore,
like that of assistant alderman, was eagerly coveted
by all your burghers of a certain description, who have a
huge relish for good feeding, and an humble ambition to
be great men in a small way—who thirst after a little
brief authority, that shall render them the terror of the
alms-house and the bridewell—that shall enable them to
lord it over obsequious poverty, vagrant vice, outcast prostitution,
and hunger-driven dishonesty—that shall place
in their hands the lesser, but galling scourge of the law,
and give to their beck a houndlike pack of catchpoles and
bum-bailiffs—tenfold greater rogues than the culprits they
hunt down!—My readers will excuse this sudden warmth,
which I confess is unbecoming of a grave historian; but
I have a mortal antipathy to catchpoles, bum-bailiffs, and
little great men.

The ancient magistrates of this city corresponded with
those of the present time no less in form, magnitude, and
intellect, than in prerogative and privilege. The burgomasters,
like our aldermen, were generally chosen by
weight; and not only the weight of the body, but likewise
the weight of the head. It is a maxim practically observed
in all honest, plain thinking, regular cities, that an alderman
should be fat—and the wisdom of this can be proved
to a certainty. That the body is in some measure an
image of the mind, or rather that the mind is moulded to
the body, like melted lead to the clay in which it is cast,
has been insisted on by many men of science, who have
made human nature their peculiar study. For as a learned
gentleman of our own city observes, “there is a constant
relation between the moral character of all intelligent creatures
and their physical constitution—between their habits
and the structure of their bodies.” Thus we see, that a
lean, spare, diminutive body is generally accompanied by
a petulant, restless, meddling mind. Either the mind wears
down the body by its continual motion; or else the body,

not affording the mind sufficient house-room, keeps it
continually in a state of fretfulness, tossing and worrying
about, from the uneasiness of its situation. Whereas your
round, sleek, fat, unwieldy periphery is ever attended by a
mind like itself, tranquil, torpid, and at ease; and we may
always observe, that your well-fed, robustious burghers are
in general very tenacious of their ease and comfort; being
great enemies to noise, discord, and disturbance: and
surely none are more likely to study the public tranquillity
than those who are so careful of their own. Whoever
hears of fat men heading a riot, or herding together in
turbulent mobs?—No—no—it is your lean, hungry men,
who are continually worrying society, and setting the whole
community by the ears.

The divine Plato, whose doctrines are not sufficiently
attended to by Philosophers of the present age, allows to
every man three souls: one immortal and rational, seated
in the brain, that it may overlook and regulate the body
—a second consisting of the surly and irrascible passions,
which, like belligerent powers, lie encamped around the
heart—a third mortal and sensual, destitute of reason,
gross and brutal in its propensities, and enchained in the
belly, that it may not disturb the divine soul, by its ravenous
howlings. Now, according to this excellent theory,
what can be more clear, than that your fat alderman is
most likely to have the most regular and well conditioned
mind. His head is like a huge, spherical chamber, containing
a prodigious mass of soft brains, whereon the rational
soul lies softly and snugly couched, as on a feather
bed; and the eyes, which are the windows of the bedchamber,
are usually half closed, that its slumberings may
not be disturbed by external objects. A mind thus comfortably
lodged, and protected from disturbance, is manifestly
most likely to perform its functions with regularity
and ease. By dint of good feeding, morever, the mortal
and malignant soul, which is confined in the belly, and
which by its raging and roaring, puts the irritable soul in
the neighbourhood of the heart in an intolerable passion,
and thus renders men crusty and quarrelsome when hungry—is
completely pacified, silenced, and put to rest:
whereupon a host of honest good-fellow qualities, and
kindhearted affections, which had laid in perdue, slily
peeping out of the loopholes of the heart, finding this Cerberus
asleep, do pluck up their spirits, turn out one and all
in their holiday suits, and gambol up and down the diaphraghm—disposing

their possessor to laughter, good humour,
and a thousand friendly offices towards his fellow
mortals.

As a board of magistrates, formed on this model, think
but very little, they are less likely to differ and wrangle
about favourite opinions; and as they generally transact
business upon a hearty dinner, they are naturally disposed
to be lenient and indulgent in the administration of their
duties. Charlemagne was conscious of this, and therefore
(a pitiful measure, for which I can never forgive him,)
ordered in his cartularies, that no judge should hold a
court of justice, except in the morning, on an empty stomach.—A
rule which, I warrant, bore hard upon all the
poor culprits in his kingdom. The more enlightened and
humane generation of the present day have taken an opposite
course, and have so managed that the alderman
are the best fed men in the community; feasting lustily
on the fat things of the land, and gorging so heartily oysters
and turtles, that in process of time they acquire the
activity of the one, and the form, the waddle, and the
green fat of the other. The consequence is, as I have
just said; these luxurious feastings do produce such a
dulcet equanimity and repose of the soul, rational and
irrational, that their transactions are proverbial for unvarying
monotony; and the profound laws, which they enact
in their dozing moments, amid the labours of digestion,
are quietly suffered to remain as dead letters, and never
enforced, when awake. In a word, your fair round bellied
burgomaster, like a full fed mastiff, dozes quietly at
the house door, always at home, and always at hand to
watch over its safety: but as to electing a lean, meddling
candidate to the office, as has now and then been done, I
would as lief put a greyhound to watch the house, or a race-horse
to drag an ox-waggon.

The burgomasters then, as I have already mentioned,
were wisely chosen by weight, and the schepens or assistant
Alderman, were appointed to attend upon them, and
help them to eat; but the latter in the course of time, when
they have been fed and fattened into sufficient bulk of body
and drowsiness of brain, became very eligible candidates
for the burgomasters' chair; have fairly eaten themselves
into office, as a mouse eats its way into a comfortable lodgment
in a goodly blue-nosed, skimmed milk, New-England
cheese.