[. 18% J [ Aus. 
LETTER ABOUT AFFAIRS IN GENERAL, FROM A GENTLEMAN 
IN LONDON TO A GENTLEMAN IN THE COUNTRY. 
Tue elections are over: one hundred and forty new members 
have been returned to Parliament: and there is an end, for this time, to 
the six weeks’ saturnalia of riot and rascality, which, once in seven 
years, is permitted to afflict our country. There are some pursuits in 
life, and some associations, which, from their very nature, dispose the 
minds of those engaged in them to misanthropy. Medical practitioners 
acquire a strange intimacy—more, I should think, than a pleasant one— 
with the vices of mankind ; and lawyers, who have passed their lives in 
active practice, seldom think romantically of the virtue of their species ; 
but of all the departments of worldly affairs, I doubt if there be any in 
which, taken as regards the mass, human nature exhibits itself to such 
entire disadvantage as at an election. 
The broad, and admitted, system of Lie, in the first place—the 
sweeping and transparent HUMBUG that runs through the whole pro- 
ceeding—would be ludicrous—an excellent jest to laugh at—if the grave 
nature of the business did not render levity somewhat indecent. There 
is the “ qualification oath,” to begin with ; by which your candidate will 
swear to the bona-fide possession of a property, of which all the world 
shall know that he has xo possession, but such as is purely, fallacious, and 
colourable. ‘Then comes the septennial cant about “ bribery and corrup- 
tion ;” and that which is still more impudent, the horror, and depreca- 
tion, and recrimination about “indirect influence,” and “secret coa- 
lition,” and « illegal manufacture of franchise”—all this absolutely 
coming from the lips of men who are, at the same time, straining the very 
engines so deprecated to the utmost, and whose only real ground of 
apprehension is—each and every one—that he may not be able 
to use them to so much purpose as his antagonist. And then there 
comes the base—the shameless—libellous—low abuse ;—the bloodless 
blackguard squabbles between men from whose rank and state we look 
for better feeling. The merciless tyranny exerted to compel votes, and 
the mean servility employed to solicit them. Then comes the robbery 
and rapacity of “agents”—rascals, the insolence of whose extortion is a 
greater offence than the pecuniary loss sustained by it! The gullibility 
of the mob, as filthy as its greediness, or even as its ferocity ; and the 
disgust of seeing Englishmen ready for any violence, or any meanness, 
that a debauch of beer or brandy is to repay. And then we have the 
position of the precious candidate—the man, whose first attributes to 
fit him for the post he asks for, should be those of the purest integrity 
and the proudest honour! To see that very man, as it were, courting 
insult—exposing himself to every description of personal indignity! To 
find him familiar with all dirty, petty artifice, suborning perjury, and 
inventing fraud! To see him accepting aid to-day from hands which, 
to-morrow, he would shame to touch: and owing his success (if he does. 
succeed) to means and principles, such as an honourable mind woul 
shrink, and recoil from employing—It shews something, all this, lik “a 
grovelling—like a prostration—which—(we seldom lick the dust for 
nothing)—a high-minded man, perfectly disinterested, would hardly ‘care 
to submit to! <“* His whole life,” I heard anewly elected borough mem- 
ber protest the other day, “devoted to the service of his constituents,” 
would be “too little to repay the boon he owed them!” That very, 
Vv! 
