XOTES OF THE MONTH. 221 



working in accordance with the spirit in which the people were told 

 it was framed, let him sweep away those blotches with unsparing 

 hand, and he may draw six months in advance on the confidence of 

 the country. There is not a single objection can be taken to this pro- 

 ceeding which should delay its being instantly adopted. None are 

 more eager for its completion than the parties particularly interested 

 in it the people of the respective boroughs, with the exception, per- 

 haps, of Stafford. There is hardly a measure of the same magnitude 

 which would be received with more gladness by the whole commu- 

 nity, and certainly not one more necessary. Nothing can be more 

 repugnant to all correctly thinking men than that the most flagrant 

 political baseness and venality should be carried on in a few towns to 

 the scandal of the whole country, as if the removal of the evils of 

 rotten boroughs, and the thousand-and-one nuisances attending them 

 cost nothing for their removal. Liverpool is eager for the extinction 

 of the mercenary crew known by the name of the old freemen, who 

 are the most subservient tools in the hands of Whig, Tory, or Radical, 

 as the price of opinions may sell. As for Stafford, we can safely say 

 that there cannot be found in the whole annals of bribery and turpi- 

 tude an instance of a single town so dead to all sense of decency, 

 honour, principle, and every thing approximating to an ennobling 

 feeling. The place is too miserably insignificant in every sense, ex- 

 cept in its unprecedented profligacy to attract the attention of any but 

 such as are obliged to be acquainted with whatever appertains to the 

 public; and hence the general indifference as to its fate. Not so 

 with Liverpool : its station, wealth, importance, give it an interest in 

 the public mind inseparably connected with the mention of its name. 

 A total disfranchisement of the second town in the empire could not 

 be thought of; because, in the first place, the vast majority of 

 electors, independent of the old freemen, are untinctured with the 

 mania of trading in votes ; and secondly, its population, increasing in 

 intelligence and power, should not be sacrificed for the backslidings 

 of a few. Moreover, one of its representatives, Mr. Ewart, is a good 

 and useful legislator, to whom society at large is indebted for the 

 introduction of much that is desirable in our statutes. His intelli- 

 gence and activity more than counterbalance the maiserie of poor 

 Lord Sandon, whom nature seems to have expressly fashioned for 

 an exhibition of the folly of those who elected him We should not 

 have mentioned the two towns together, but that the partisans of the 

 small one cry out for a like fate being awarded to both. Not a single 

 reason applied to the case of Liverpool is applicable to Stafford. The 

 latter is, in all possible shape of the word, despicable in its baseness, 

 its impudence, and its representatives. Stafford was once dignified 

 by the circumstance of Sheridan being returned for it ; and by way 

 of affording a contrast, in the most ludicrous extreme, to the wit, 

 brilliancy, and powers of the author of the " School for Scandal," it 

 is now most befittingly represented by Captains Chetwynd and 

 Gronow, who, if they have such a thing as brains, take especial pre- 

 caution to keep so very interesting a fact in their exclusive possession. 

 Conceive the propriety of a community of shoemakers being pre- 

 sented to the gentlemen of Westminster in the persons of a pair of 



