All the committee adjourned to the Swan Inn and there the clerk opens his book on the dinner table and sends for his partner, who happens to be a proprietor of a share and says to him, "Come Rutter, you'll propose that all the gentlemen who were on the committee before shall be on it again". To which Mr. Rutter bows and says, "Oh, certainly, Sir" and then walks away to warm himself at the fire and then dinner is put on the table.

And this is the whole business of a "General Meeting of the Proprietors of the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal Company" and there is no canal company in England whose affairs are better managed.