One other remarkable fact I discovered in this town. I hope the reader will not be startled by it. I relate it as a truth. I state it as an undeniable proposition. I am open to be convinced if I am wrong; but if I am right it is a thing to be laid before Parliament, as a great argument in favour of something or against something else. Every fact surely leads up to an inference. Every truth has a moral. This fact I commend to all whom it doth concern, and I declare it. It is this: the representation of N—— is usually determined by the brothel-keepers of the town. All the men who ever sat for that borough since the Reform Bill passed have been returned by these despicable human creatures, who derive means of sustaining their own existence out of the most loathsome, although we are told incurable, evil. How do I prove my fact and moral? the reader asks. Thus: when all the really honest electors have been polled, the operators or agents exhaust the comparatively decent section of the bribable part of the town, and the result of the whole gives to the Conservative, it may be, a majority of four, or it may be a majority to the Liberal of four, or it may be five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, or eleven,—according to circumstances. We may suppose this to be late in the day. But there are still from twenty-three to twenty-five of the morally unclean ten-pound householders or burgesses in a particular street of N——, who regularly pay their rates and taxes within the date prescribed for exclusion from the register, and who are, therefore, duly-qualified voters. Neither Liberal nor Conservative will lose an election if he can help it. In the emergency of the time I speak of, the Liberal, finding himself in a minority of four, goes into Stew Street and buys up the twenty-three, four, or five occupiers of these leprosy-distilling houses, and pays any price the occupiers think fit to demand. They are taken up to poll like free, independent, honest, and moral electors. They turn the scale. They return the member. All the rest has been a farce. Printing the addresses of rival candidates, engaging committee-rooms, every thing in the way of machinery or principle, up to the visit of the operator or agent in Stew Street, has been useless. I hate shams. I detest mockeries. Why not leave Stew Street to return the gentleman or blackguard who is to be called M.P. for N——?
Apropos to this, or by way of postscript to my moralising, let me inform the reader that a cabinet minister has been returned for N——, and that, beyond all earthly doubt, Stew Street alone, or its voters, and the cabinet minister’s money, returned him to Parliament in the way I have pointed out.
Well, as I have told the reader already, I saw the opportunity for getting an engagement, so I went to somebody, who put himself into communication with somebody else—this gentleman, who for the present may be called Mr. Somebodyelse, having made a fortune in trade, and having a wife who had persuaded him that he was a remarkably clever fellow, and that he ought to go into Parliament.
Mr. Somebodyelse had no political principles. He had himself always voted, as an elector, just in the way that his largest customer had recommended; which largest customer, as if events happened by chance, had always been a Liberal. Somehow or other, Mrs. Somebodyelse got into her feminine head that her spouse had herein gone on the wrong tack; that it was “not respectable” to be a Liberal; that the “highly genteel thing” was to stand by the Tories; and she therefore determined that, whenever her spouse went into Parliament, he should be a stanch Conservative: to which he, like a fond husband, said, “I will.” This did not much matter to me. Mr. Somebodyelse would do for N—— and for me as well as any other man. I was not careful about political opinions, and therefore made no hesitation about rendering my services to him.
It is always desirable to go through the usual forms. Occasionally, forms useless in themselves are made essential by custom. A man who could write was therefore employed to write an Address for our candidate, and one or two fellows were also engaged to “cram” or “coach” him with speeches that he was to re-deliver. They were not very fine speeches. The oratory was, in my opinion, gassy, flowery, nonsensical; or, as the great Mr. Barnum would say, and I shall take the liberty of saying, they were “humbugeous.”
We went down from London direct to the borough. The party consisted of myself, my associate (who was the agent), an attorney, and the candidate, whose name, address, and quality I had now ascertained. The reader may now know this gentleman as Mr. Jollefat, a retired tallow-melter or chandler, then residing at Melpomene Lodge, Clapham, and supposed to be a sleeping partner of “the old house” in which he had skimmed the cauldrons of boiling tallow admirably for more than thirty years.
On our arrival, we put out the address of our candidate. We started a personal canvass. We did all that was usual except bribe—and the time had hardly come for that—but all that we did only served to discourage every body but me.
My associate had told his candidate that he thought a couple of thousand pounds or thereabouts would do, whereas I had told him it would cost five thousand pounds at least, but that he ought to be prepared with seven or eight thousand if he really meant to go in and win. At N—— the candidate got to learn there was no chance for him with two or even three thousand pounds. He was chapfallen, and telegraphed to his wife, who came down in a sumptuous anonymity, which, to our annoyance, had more effect than the simple announcement of her name and her relationship to the candidate would have had.
This lady, unlike the wife of Sir Baldpate Belly, under the like circumstances, became presumptuous and impracticable. She said she thought that three thousand “goolden suvrins was a wery enormus sum.” It cost her good man a wery long time to make that ’ere sum of money; and although she did not mind his spending his money like a Briton or a prime-minister, she said she thought three thousand pounds ought to satisfy every body, and if it didn’t, why, she wouldn’t go no further, and they might do as they could.
Mrs. Jollefat also said that she liked to see her way sure before she began. If it could not be done for that price certain, why, she’d rather not try it on at all. Three thousand “goolden suvrins,” as she often said, was a wery big sum of money, and it was not to be tossed into the Thames. That is what they would say in London, and she meant it was not to be made ducks and drakes on.
I was a little astonished, more especially when my associate boldly told her that, upon his honour, he would do it for the money. Of course I could not there and then contradict him, and in effect say he was a jolly humbug to let in a thrifty woman and her spouse in such a mode, so I held my peace until I got him alone. Then I protested. He replied, “Oh, gammon! make the old boy and girl spend. They won’t do any good with their money if they don’t drop it here; and, after all, rely upon it, I will make them shell out three or five thousand pounds more if it is wanted.” I argued and expostulated; my associate was firm. He said, “We have gone too far into the matter to go back. We shall both of us be ruined in our professions if we run away from the stake. I say, that we must go in and win, and make the old boy pay.”
I have heard it said that “Necessity is the mother of invention.” I believe the proverb is familiar to most of my readers. I am going to supply another illustration of it.
I was oppressed in conscience about Mr. and Mrs. Jollefat and their purse for the rest of the day. I felt that we must go in and win, or we must not go in