Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot, or herding together in turbulent mobs! No--no--it is your lean, hungry men who are continually worrying society, and setting the whole community by the ears.
The divine Plato, whose doctrines are not sufficiently attended to by philosophers of the present age, allows to every man three souls--one immortal and rational, seated in the brain, that it may overlook and regulate the body; a second, consisting of the surly and irascible passions which, like belligerent powers, lie encamped around the heart; a third, mortal and sensual, destitute of reason, gross and brutal in its propensities, and enchained in the belly, that it may not disturb the divine soul by its ravenous howlings.

Now, according to this excellent theory, what can be more clear, than that your fat alderman is most likely to have the most regular and well-conditioned mind.

His head is like a huge spherical chamber, containing a prodigious mass of soft brains, whereon the rational soul lies softly and snugly couched, as on a feather-bed; and the eyes which are the windows of the bedchamber, are usually half-closed, that its slumberings may not be disturbed by external objects.

A mind thus comfortably lodged, and protected from disturbance, is manifestly most like to perform its functions with regularly and ease.
By dint of good feeding, moreover, the mortal and malignant soul, which is confined in the belly, and which, by its raging and roaring, puts the irritable soul in the neighborhood of the heart in an intolerable passion, and thus renders men crusty and quarrelsome when hungry, is completely pacified, silenced, and put to rest; whereupon a host of honest, good-fellow qualities and kind-hearted affections, which had lain perdue, slily peeping out of the loopholes of the heart, finding this Cerberus asleep, do pluck up their spirits, turn out one and all in their holiday suits, and gambol up and down the diaphragm--disposing their possessor to laughter, good humor, and a thousand friendly offices towards his fellow-mortals.
As a board of magistrates, formed on this principle, think but very little, they are the less likely to differ and wrangle about favorite opinions; and, as they generally transact business upon a hearty dinner, they are naturally disposed to be lenient and indulgent in the administration of their duties.

Charlemagne was conscious of this, and therefore ordered in his cartularies, that no judge should hold a court of justice except in the morning on an empty stomach.