Now as this law, under a modified form,
is to this day in force in England; and as it offers in various respects
a strange anomaly touching the general law of Fast--and Loose-Fish,
it is here treated of in a separate chapter, on the same courteous
principle that prompts the English railways to be at the expense of a
separate car, specially reserved for the accommodation of royalty.
In the first place, in curious proof of the fact that the above-mentioned
law is still in force, I proceed to lay before you a circumstance-that
happened within the last two years.
It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich,
or some one of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded
in killing and beaching a fine whale which they had originally
descried afar off from the shore. Now the Cinque Ports are
partially or somehow under the jurisdiction of a sort of policeman
or beadle, called a Lord Warden. Holding the office directly
from the crown, I believe, all the royal emoluments incident
to the Cinque Port territories become by assignment his.
By some writers this office is called a sinecure. But not so.
Because the Lord Warden is busily employed at times in fobbing
his perquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of that same
fobbing of them.
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