As in the public this appointment from the private Flachsenfingen Council has not been judged of as it deserved, I consider it my duty to offer a defence for the body corporate; and that rather here, than in the _Reichsanzeiger_, or _Imperial Indicator_.--I have already mentioned, in the Second Letter-Box, that the Town-Syndic drove a trade in Hamburg candles; and the then Buergermeister in coffee-beans, which he sold as well whole as ground. Their joint traffic, however, which they carried on exclusively, was in the eight School-offices of Flachsenfingen: the other members of the Council acting only as bale-wrappers, shopmen and accountants in the Council wareroom. A Council-house, indeed, is like an India-house, where not only resolutions or appointments, but also shoes and cloth, are exposed to sale. Properly speaking, the Councillor derives his freedom of office-trading from that principle of the Roman law: _Cui jus est donandi, eidem et vendendi jus est_, that is to say, He who has the right of giving anything away, has also a right to dispose of it for money, if he can. Now as the Council-members have palpably the right of conferring offices gratis, the right of selling them must follow of course. _Short Extra-word on Appointment-brokers in general._ My chief anxiety is lest the Academy-product-sale-Commission[46] of the State carry on its office-trade too slackly. And what but the commonweal must suffer in the long-run, if important posts are distributed, not according to the current cash, which is laid down for them, but according to connexions, relationships, party recommendations, and bowings and cringings? Is it not a contradiction, to charge titulary offices dearer than real ones? Should not one rather expect that the real Hofrath would pay higher by the _alterum tantum_ than the mere titulary Hofrath?--Money, among European nations, is now the equivalent and representative of value in all things, and consequently in understanding; the rather as a _head_ is stamped on it: to pay down the purchase-money of an office is therefore neither more nor less than to stand an _examen rigorosum_, which is held by a good _schema examinandi_. To invert this, to pretend exhibiting your qualifications, in place of these their surrogates, and assignates and _monnoie de confiance_, is simply to resemble the crazy philosophers in _Gulliver's Travels_, who, for social converse, instead of names of things, brought the things themselves tied up in a bag; it is, indeed, plainly as much as trying to fall back into the barbarous times of trade by barter, when the Romans, instead of the figured cattle on their leather money, drove forth the beeves themselves. [46] Borrowed from the "Imperial Mine-product-sale-Commission," in Vienna: in their very names these Vienna people show taste.