How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Page)
Quote #4
I had started a number of these people out—the bravest knights I could get—each sandwiched between bulletin-boards bearing one device or another. (16.2)
Hanks uses American business sense and advertising tactics to help spread his ideas. It's pretty silly putting a sandwich board on a knight, but it gets the job done. Twain seems to be saying that the knight is more foolish than the advertisement… though he may also be suggesting that advertising itself is kind of silly and undignified.
Quote #5
In my own former day—in remote centuries not yet stirring in the womb of time—there were old Englishmen who imagined that they had been born in a free country: a "free" country with the Corporation Act and the Test still in force in it. (16.3)
Here's a specific law from Twain's time to remind us that British = stinky. The Acts were set up in the 17th century as a way of getting Catholics out of public office: elected officials had to renounce transubstantiation (the turning of bread and wine into Jesus's body and blood) and other Catholic beliefs. It's funny that Twain should say that in a book so critical of the Catholic Church, but it also makes it clear that he hates oppression rather than any specific oppressive institution.