boroughs, if he cannot otherwise obtain a seat in the house. It is not however, in my judgment, the most eligible representation for such a person. I explain under another head, that it is better to make one's first efforts on the side of opposition.

Some of the places of which the elections are entirely in the power of government. are filled with inhabitants in the immediate employment of the government; and of course, therefore, unwilling to give offence and risk dismissal by thwarting its wishes. That such people should lose their elective franchises because the government happens to have employed them, were unreasonable. On the other hand, their votes cannot be given, in such a situation, duly unbiassed.

In other cases, peers or commoners with great election interest, resign the benefit of that interest to ministers upon certain conditions. It is scarce possible, that any arrangement of this nature should not be in contravention of the laws of patriotism and of rectitude. But, what have politicians to do with

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a visionary morality, that cannot be exemplified in the ordinary conduct of mankind?

A part, likewise, of the election influence of government, consists in the assemblage of the separate and private election interests of its different ministers. It is but reasonable, that he who fills an high office, and enjoys a large salary, should bring to government a vote or two in parliament. The votes which are in this way ensured to government, come fairly for, it cannot be dishonest or unfair in any man to give his voice, in the senate, in favour of measures which he has, himself, upon mature deliberation, recommended in the cabinet. The union of those several species of interest, it is that gives the government that ascendancy in the legislature, without which its necessary business could not proceed.

Opposition Boroughs.

A part of the election interest of the country is, ever, necessarily in the hands of men whom the spirit of party, or perhaps worthier principles, move to employ it in opposition to the government. These are great peers and commoners, who aspire continually to thwart an administration in which they are not themselves the principals. Their election conduct is not more praise-worthy than that of the supporters of the government; neither is it more dishonorable and unpatriotic. A young adventurer in parliament who has not a close borough of his own, cannot do better than accept the representation of any opposition borough for which he can get brought in, free of trouble and expense. On this side, he will have opportunity to gain advantages of reputation, to affect an outrageous patriotism, and to act with a bold independence not so easily possible for him who begins his political career as a mere creature of the government.

AMONG the many improvements in the arts which distinguish the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the present, is one that reduces borough-monging to a system, in which every thing desirable is atchieved, as it were, by a few regular operations of machinery. We have now, surveyors of boroughs, just as well as surveyors of lands and buildings: we have agents, who, with the address and the plain business management of any money-lender or auctioneer, are ready to find to venal electors the purchaser who will give the highest price, and to men of opulence desiring to become legislators, the prize they want, for the money they are willing to lavish.

ONE of these election agents shall, perhaps, be a man that has forfeited his preten sions to fair character by the most notorious acts of perjury and bad faith. He may have betrayed those whom he ensnared to the guilt

of bribery; and may have had even his true evidence against them slighted, on account of the general turpitude of his conduct. Let him be such a person as no man would yield himself to the contamination of associating with, but to employ him to the uses of his vocation. Yet, let him, on the other hand, possess, or pretend to possess, some tolerable knowledge of the state of election influence at most of the boroughs in the kingdom. let him be known among the voters, as a man practised in all the foul arts of election intrigue; let him get recommended for skill in such arts, to those who are prompted to aspire to be legislators, more by the vanity of affluence than by conscious wisdom. He shall not, in this case, fail to be made much of on an election year; he shall negotiate not a little of election business; and he shall, at this time, perhaps pocket money enough for his subsistence in luxury till another seventh year's harvest returns. It will be the safer to use him, since he has previously forfeited all character to that degree, that,