The Monstrance or Shrine at each end. (See page 55.)] CHAPTER VIII. THE IRONMONGERS’ CHARITIES AND CHARITABLE IRONMONGERS. Citizenship is the birthright of every man, but it is not every man who is worthy of the name of citizen. What makes the honourable distinction all the more valuable is when “a citizen of no mean city,” and the true representative of “a nation of shopkeepers,” so truly values his rights and privileges as to be ever ready to come forward when occasion requires to protect it from the ignorance and contamination of those whose only design must be to overthrow its virtues for the sake of personal gains. It was Lord Chancellor Selborne who some years ago publicly declared that his ancestors for four generations had been connected with one of the City Guilds, and he had never been ashamed of anything either of those ancestors had done, and never regretted his own connection with the City or its Companies. And another eminent man of earlier days most emphatically declared, “I would rather be born of the basest and meanest of mankind, and rise to fame and distinction by my own exertions, than that, being born of noble ancestry and high degree, I should bring disgrace on an exalted name, and cross with a bar sinister the proud escutcheon of my father’s house.” To the humble traders of old London their richer brethren left their trusts, their charities, and their blessings. Their estates had been obtained by hard work and hard-earned money in a great many instances, and having been associated with the zealous and careful men of their own Guilds they left to them the carrying out of the designs expressed in their wills. No one would have left to a Government department such a trust then, and no one will do so now. The Government inspector, in his evidence before the Companies Commission, declared that he considered William Thwaytes’ bequest of 20,000_l._ “to make the Society comfortable”—and that Society was the Clothworkers’ Company, to which he belonged some half a century ago—really meant “to make the traders comfortable”! Or that every clothworker in the kingdom—shall we say the world?—ought to participate. On the same principle, if a workman in a shop left “to the workmen in the shop” 5_l._, every shop in that trade should have its share. Pray what would be the value of the bequest?