Now a committee-man is a parti-coloured officer.  He must be drawn like Janus with cross and pile in his countenance, as he relates to the soldiers or faces about to his fleecing the country.  Look upon him martially, and he is a justice of war, one that hath bound his Dalton up in buff, and will needs be of the Quorum to the best commanders.  He is one of Mars his lay-elders; he shares in the government, though a Nonconformist to his bleeding rubric.  He is the like sectary in arms, as the Platonic is in love, keeps a fluttering in discourse, but proves a haggard in the action.  He is not of the soldiers and yet of his flock.  It is an emblem of the golden age (and such indeed he makes it to him) when so tame a pigeon may converse with vultures.  Methinks a committee hanging about a governor, and bandileers dangling about a furred alderman, have an anagram resemblance.  There is no syntax between a cap of maintenance and a helmet.  Who ever knew an enemy routed by a grand jury and a Billa vera? It is a left-handed garrison where their authority perches; but the more preposterous the more in fashion, the right hand fights while the left rules the reins.  The truth is, the soldier and the gentleman are like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, one fights at all adventures to purchase the other the government of the island.  A committee-man properly should be the governor’s mattress to fit his truckle, and to new string him with sinews of war; for his chief use is to raise assessments in the neighbouring wapentake.

The country people being like an Irish cow that will not give down her milk unless she see her calf before her, hence it is he is the garrison’s dry nurse; he chews their contribution before he feeds them, so the poor soldiers live like Trochilus by picking the teeth of this sacred crocodile.

So much for his warlike or ammunition face, which is so preter-natural that it is rather a vizard than a face; Mars in him hath but a blinking aspect, his face of arms is like his coat, partie per pale, soldier and gentleman much of a scantling.

Now enter his taxing and deglubing face, a squeezing look like that of Vespasianus, as if he were bleeding over a close stool.

Take him thus and he is in the inquisition of the purse an authentic gypsy, that nips your bong with a canting ordinance; not a murdered fortune in all the country but bleeds at the touch of this malefactor.  He is the spleen of the body politic that swells itself to the consumption of the whole.  At first, indeed, he ferreted for the parliament, but since he hath got off his cope he set up for himself.  He lives upon the sins of the people, and that is a good standing dish too.  He verifies the axiom, lisdem nutritur ex quibus componitur; his diet is suitable to his constitution.  I have wondered often why the plundered countrymen should repair to him for succour, certainly it is under the same notion, as one whose pockets are picked goes to Moll Cutpurse, as the predominant in that faculty.