Volume Ii Part 9 (1/2)

'What is the chief recommendation of Sir Watkin?' asked one of Mr.

Wentworth's supporters of a friend of the Baronet's.

'Money, to be sure. He's got it here,' said the Baronet's supporter, significantly slapping his pocket.

But the Conservative candidate had money as well. The question was, which had the longest purse.

'And, then, look at the requisition presented to him,' continued the Baronet's friend.

'Got up by his agent, as a matter of course, who was well paid for his work.'

'Then look at his committee.'

'All men who are his tradespeople, or tenants and dependents, or flunkies who want to be invited to the Hall. There has been no independent action in the matter.'

'You are very green if you expect that in Sloville,' continued the Baronet's supporter. 'If you ask nine men out of ten in the borough who they will vote for, the answer will be, ”For them as I gets the most by.”'

It was too true. The Sloville people were as selfish as their representatives. They were like the voters of St. Albans, who, when the traffic on the great North Road was ruined by the railway, lamented that they had nothing to sell but their votes; or like the voters of Stafford, who requested Sheridan to vote against reform, as it was by the sale of votes that they chiefly got their money. They in this resembled the ill.u.s.trious Samuel Johnson, who, upon his friend Thrale demurring to the expense of a contested election for Southwark, remarked: 'The expense, if it were more, I should wish him to despise. Money is made for such purposes as this.'

It was an Irish M.P. who, when reproached with selling his country, thanked G.o.d that he had got a Government to sell. There were many of the Sloville electors who were of the Irishman's way of thinking.

'I suppose there is little chance for me,' said Wentworth, as he walked home with the Unitarian minister-who had a large chapel, generally empty, but which had been crowded to suffocation to hear him utter his political programme. Wentworth, as the papers say, had received quite an ovation.

He had come amongst them as a stranger; he had made them all friends; he was an effective speaker, and his audience were of his side in politics.

Unfortunately, it consisted largely of excitable young people who had no votes. They had been told to do their duty: to support neither a half-hearted Liberal nor a thorough-going old Tory, but to rally round the gentleman from London. The Unitarian brother heartily endorsed that appeal. He had known Wentworth when he came to preach as a sapling from college. He had sympathized a good deal with him in his view. He had the Christian charity not to judge too harshly of a man who, it seemed to him, had in a sense gone wrong, but who was a man and a brother still.

'My dear fellow,' said he to his guest, as they were seated in his sanctum, ornamented with portraits and darkened with the quartos of the old divines, 'I fear in politics, as in religion, people do much as they please, lecture them as you will. To listen is one thing, to practise what you hear is another. You are for the separation of Church and State, and I support you; but the respected minister who preaches in your old chapel will preach about Christ's kingdom being not of this world, and then will go and vote for the Whig Baronet because he belongs to such a respectable family, and all the respectable Dissenters in the town will do the same, and when Christmas comes will receive their reward. Their deacons are very good men, but they will never vote to offend their rich customers. I could get a thousand people to come and hear you, to applaud all your hits, to see all your arguments, to endorse all your opinions, but I could not get ten of them to vote for you-that's quite another thing. It is all very well to applaud Radical sentiments, so long as business is not interfered with.'

'But the poorer voters-there are a good many of them in the borough, are there not?'

'Well, they will do as their betters, and you can't wonder at it. The Tories and the Liberals give away coal and beef and blankets at Christmas. There are lots of Radicals in the town, but they will not vote for a Radical, however much they may cheer a Radical speech. Their wives wouldn't let them.'

'I fear Sloville is in a bad way,' said Wentworth.

'Well, it is a fair sample of an English borough. I often grieve over it, nevertheless.'

'Why not make it better?'

'Ay, that's the question. I can see no other road to improvement but to go on talking. Liberal ideas spread and light does come, however slowly.

Sometimes I almost feel inclined to ask for a drastic reform.'

'What is that?'

'To get the borough disfranchised. It would be very easy to get up a pet.i.tion for bribery and corruption; it would be easier still to prove it.'

'And then?'

'The result would be that I should lose my congregation, and be the most unpopular man in the town.'

'Why not ”dare to be a Daniel”?'