plead his cause before the assembled electors; let him accost them bravely. Let him meet their doubts and prepossessions with lofty disdain. Let him not hesitate to inform them, that he is much too good for them. Let him boast his talents, his virtues, his public services. Let him not fail to tell them, how many bodies of much more desireable constituents would be glad to be represented by him, while he prefers forcing himself on persons who love him not, precisely because they do not love him. After thus galling the feelings of those whom most others would have striven to pacify, to soothe and to conciliate, he may, of course, depart in the persuasion, that he has, by his speech, made his election secure.

In the mean time, let none of those practices of canvass be omitted, which, though continually reprobated, are constantly maintained. Promises, threats, treats, even pecuniary bribes are to be dealt out to the voters separately, with an activity the most indefa

tigable. It is not the recourse to such practices, but detection in them, that is the disgrace. Even if a minister, is our Quixote candidate to be, by that, precluded from any advantages of canvas which he should have, otherwise, enjoyed? To be a minister, is, to enjoy a certain superiority over others. But, where were the superiority, if he might not, upon an occasion like this, break or elude the law as freely as any simple individual ?

Let us suppose this adventurous candidate elected what a triumph? No matter how suspicious the practices by which he prevailed, since his object is attained. In election contests, as in love and war, all arts are allowed. Besides, our hero aspires to give dignity to the country by becoming its true and faithful knight. He seeks but to have a right to act as the guardian of its interests: If he has laid any sort of compulsion, direct or indirect, on the choice of the freeholders, it was only for their own good. And even the parliamentary orator of methodistic ca

suistry will not deny, that where the ends are so very good, the means cannot well be bad.

What, if, after all, a petition of a rival candidate should pursue this good man into the house, if his illegal practices should be clearly detected,-if his return should be pronounced void,-if the Patriot, the Orator, the Statesman, the Minister should thus be exposed to the whole nation in the character of one that violates the fundamental principles of morality, tramples upon the laws of his country, strives to vitiate the representation of the people, all for the sake of a mere whim, and because he would rather be member for a place of which the name is represented by one combination of letters of the alphabet, than for another place the name of which is denoted by a different combination of letters?

Well! What of all this? Nothing very distressing. The hero may console himself with the reflexion, that magnis cecidit ausis. And had he not, in his own estimation at

least, so vast a store of character that he may well afford to part with some of it upon an occasion like this?

Great Borough Election Contest.

There are many open boroughs, the repre sentation of which may well become the ob ject of vigorous and expensive election

contests.

Let

I am far, indeed, from recommending to the young man educated expressly for the career of parliamentary and ministerial ambition, to enter into such a contest. him, I shall still repeat, waste his energies and his fortune as little as possible in mere electioneering; but reserve himself for the intrigues, the contentions, the toils of the grand parliamentary scene itself.

But, to represent one of the first boroughs in the Empire, may be, very fitly, an object of ambition to a man whom sudden luck in trade has put in possession of more money than he knows how to bestow; and who,

therefore, aspires to the importance of expending a part of it in political bustle.

I can figure to myself, for instance, a person of the meanest birth; deeply impregnated, from infancy, with the wildest democratical principles; impudent, active, clever, yet destitute of temperate wisdom, and a stranger to true enlargement and elevation of mind. I can imagine to myself, that the accidents of human business may have put such a person in the way to get a fortune, without expanding his mind or polishing his manners. Let him be supposed to return to otium cum dignitate in his native country while he is still in the vigour of life, and in the ardour of the selfish and ambitious passions. Let him be flushed with his success; by ignorance, full of a conceit, that there is no rank nor office in civil life, above his talents or his deserts; burning with envy of those who are above him, with hatred and vengeful resolutions against such as have, at any time, stood in the way of his success; rapid, shameless, bold in speech, fearful in