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The men of England did not secure the abolition of the "rotten-borough" system and extensive manhood suffrage until, in 1831, they smashed the windows of the Duke of Wellington's house, burned the castle of the Duke of Newcastle, and destroyed the Bishop's palace at Bristol.
Or who fancies that after the baser sort have once tasted blood, in the form of such rotten-borough States, and have learned to form their larger combinations with them, we shall still be able to admit as a matter of right a part of the territory exacted from Spain, and yet deny admission as a matter of right to the rest?
As soon as they had announced their intention to support Sir Samuel Romilly, they, the Whigs, took the greatest pains to circulate the report and create the impression that I was offering myself as a candidate for Bristol merely to oppose the "amiable Sir Samuel Romilly;" these corrupt, factious knaves, always taking care to keep out of view, that this gentleman was already a Member of Parliament for the Duke of Norfolk's rotten-borough of Arundel, which seat he was sure to retain as long as he lived, if he chose to do so.
Nearly all the stone has long ago been carried off to build Salisbury, and weeds and brushwood have overrun the remarkable fortress that has come down to us from such venerable antiquity. Under the English "rotten-borough" system Old Sarum enjoyed the privilege of sending two members to Parliament for three centuries after it ceased to be inhabited.
In the first place, he had a true eye for a strong man wherever he met him; in the next place, Lancelot's uncle the banker, was a stanch Whig ally of his in the House. 'In the rotten-borough times, Mr. Smith, he once said to Lancelot, 'we could have made a senator of you at once; but, for the sake of finality, we were forced to relinquish that organ of influence.
These worthies, I have no doubt, communicated this circumstance at head-quarters, and some of my worthy neighbours, of the rotten-borough of Andover, kindly conveyed the fact to several editors of the London newspapers. The editors, however, took good care not to mention a word of it in their papers, but it was very currently talked of in the coffee-houses of Paris.
He may be himself the most curious opposition to himself he may be the greatest mannerist of his age while denouncing conventionalism the greatest talker while eulogising silence the most woful complainer while glorifying fortitude the most uncertain and stormy in mood, while holding forth serenity as the greatest good within the reach of man; but he has nevertheless infused into the mind of the English nation a sincerity, earnestness, healthfulness, and courage which can be appreciated only by those who are old enough to tell what was our morbid state when Byron was the representative of our temper, the Clapham church of our religion, and the rotten-borough system of our political morality. We have no quarrel with this account of the greatest man of letters of our generation.
The gang thus raked together was led on by regular leaders; Black Jack, alias the Devil's Knitting Needle, was commander in chief; Bob Reynolds, a scamping currier of Devizes, who was a sort of lickspittle to Old Salmon, the attorney, was bully major; and a jolter-headed farmer, of the name of Chandler, who lived on the Green, was captain of a gang of little dirty toad-eaters of the corporation; in fact, every scamp who lived upon the taxes every scrub who had an eye to a place and every lickspittle of the corrupt knaves of the corrupt and vile rotten-borough of Devizes, took a part in these un-Englishman-like, partial, cowardly, and disgraceful proceedings.
It seems that he was at the time bargaining to quit the Beaver, and to give up THEE and THOU for a seat in the Corporation of the rotten-borough of Andover; and I have no doubt but that he acted in this unworthy manner in hopes of currying favour with the rotten managers of that rotten, corrupt, and contemptible Corporation; as he very soon afterwards doffed the straight-cut coat without a collar, sunk the broad-brimmed hat, mounted a dandy-cut coat and puppy hat, went to church, married the Parson's sister, and became a right worthy member of that truly worthy body, the Corporators of Andover.
Irish manufactures continued to be distinctly and rigidly repelled from competition with English by formal statute; Jewish and Catholic disqualification was maintained; the game-laws and the rotten-borough system, which conferred on the nobility and gentry arbitrary power over the purse and person of the commonalty, were determinedly upheld; counsel was only nominally allowed to the defendant in criminal cases; chancery withheld or plundered without resistance or appeal; and there can be no doubt that life and property were better protected by law in France at the fall of the First Napoleon than in Great Britain.
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