Now, although these twenty men should be the most intelligent that each burgh could afford, yet, as the people have no voice in the election of them, and no control over the acts of their management, however corrupt, pernicious, or ruinous, it is impossible that they can be regarded as any thing else than an useless and pernicious excrescence,--a local despotism, of the most hurtful and humiliating description, and a marketable commodity, always willing to hire themselves to whoever should bribe the highest. Circumstanced as they are, however, it is impossible that they can be the most intelligent men in their respective burghs. Being a minority, and a very small and insignificant one, public opinion must always be against them; and this circumstance alone has a degrading and debasing tendency. The object of the leading men among them must naturally be to preserve their own superiority and influence; and therefore they must naturally procure the election of recruits whose wisdom shall not be dangerous to their own influence, and whose feelings of honour shall have no tendency to revolt at the iniquities of the system; and thus, while the system is in itself as corrupting as can well be imagined, it has a tendency to draw towards it those who are both disposed and qualified for being corrupted. The specimens of those burghal office-bearers, which I had seen in the Athens during the King’s visit, were to me a decided proof of the badness of the system under which they are appointed; and the derision in which they appeared to be held by the people, and the pleasure which their disappointments and rebuffs seemed to afford, told plainly enough the estimation in which they are held; and the Scotch are by much too prudent and cautious a people not to pitch their estimate, both of things and of persons, in a very nice proportion to the value. Now, independently of its mischievous political effects, there is something in this system which is peculiarly injurious to the local police and improvements of Scotland. If the way in which those local rulers are chosen gives general offence, and if their own qualifications be so confessedly inferior as to excite contempt, it is not possible that the regulations which they frame, even assuming that they could be good in themselves, could be carried into effect with that decision, and supported with that cordiality, on the part of the public, which a wholesome police requires; as little is it likely that such men, so appointed, could either plan judicious and liberal improvements, or carry them into execution. Opposed to the people in their very formation, the people must be presumed to oppose them in every part of their conduct where opposition is practicable, and so annoy them in the rest of it as to make them confine themselves to that--to which indeed the whole spirit of the system is exceedingly prone--their own personal importance and aggrandizement.