Hayter, Thompson or Thornton, cheque, envelope,
Parkes, and privacy, till the brain can
stand it no more.

After the arrival of Thompson or Thornton at
an hotel near the railway station at Gloucester,
the evidence brought before the commissioners
is more easily made out, and the machinery by
which the commission works (tracing the money
from the man who brings it down to the agents
who disburse it, and thence to the voters who
are to be bribed, examining each in turn)
becomes sufficiently obvious. A person named
Wilton, a surgeon at Gloucester, visits this man
Thompson at his inn under pretence of prescribing
for him, and, carrying away the money which
the other has brought with him, distributes it
in small parcels to the agents who are to come
into actual communication with the electors, and
to give them the money for their votes. Of
course more money is soon wanted in addition
to our favourite five hundred pounds, and
strange, indeed, are the particulars which come
out as to the secret correspondence of the agent at
Gloucester with his principal in London, and an
extraordinary revelation is brought about of the
existence of firms whose business is election
bribery, and servants of these firms who are
nothing better than professional bribers, and
whose function it is to conduct at elections all
that dirty work which il is better the virtuous
representative of the people should know
nothing about.

And what is Sir Robert Carden about all this
time? Suppose we let him tell his own tale,
just as the writer heard him in the witness-box.
We have told Mr. Monk's story for him, Sir
Robert shall speak for himself.

Sir Robert Carden, a grey-headed, stalwart
gentleman, tall and sturdy—Sir Robert Carden,
standing erect in the witness-box, looking boldly
about him, and betraying his nervousness only
by a certain devil's tattoo of finger on the rail
which surrounds him—Sir Robert Carden,
answering the difficult questions something as a man
does when playing at proverbs—is yet made to
commit himself to the following statements:
That in 1857 a deputation waited upon him
from Gloucester, and represented to him that
the Conservative party was gaining force in that
city, and that in the event of his consenting to
stand, there seemed every chance of his securing
the election. Sir Robert Carden had no connexion
with Gloucester at all, but we are not to
suppose for a moment that the Conservative party
in the town had heard of a certain election which
once took place at St. Albans, and, knowing the
value of money in the contest at Gloucester,
thought that the gentleman who had shown the
extent of his pecuniary resources at St. Albans
would be the very man for them. This never
crossed their minds— it is extraordinary, by-the-
by, how few things did cross the minds of the
different witnesses who gave their evidence in
the Shire Hall; they appear all to have been
the most innocent, unsuspicious, thoughtless
fellows imaginable. And if all, surely most of
all, Sir Robert! He thought Gloucester so pure
a borough that it seemed to him an honour to
represent it. He asked the deputation, when it
waited upon him, what would be the probable
cost of the election, and was told between five
and six hundred pounds; yet when his expenses
(the petition included) came to upwards of four
thousand pounds, he asks no questions, suspects
no bribery, looks into no statements, and has
received no account of the expenditure to this
day. He had implicit confidence in his agent,
and would have paid more still, if he had been
asked. And pray, Sir Robert Carden, is it your
practice, in other matters of business, to pay
away these large sums without looking into the
accounts? No, only at elections. And after
paying all this money, Sir Robert still thought
this election of 1857 a pure one till he heard of
the evidence which had come out before the
commission. Certainly this gentleman is of an
unsuspicious nature; the election of '57, the
hideous revelations that came out at St. Albans,
all these things are thrown away upon him, and
he comes down in 1859 still guiltless of any
suspicion of corrupt practices, still confiding in the
Gloucester electors, still ready to disburse his
money to the amount of two thousand four
hundred and ninety-five pounds fifteen shillings and
fivepence, and all not paid yet. He had said to
his agent, " Anybody who renders me a service,
pay them liberal," but had never been told that
it would be necessary to resort to bribery; and
if he had known of the corrupt practices which
took place in '57, would, he solemnly declares,
never have stood in '59! Once more he
reiterates that he had implicit confidence in his
agent, and now he adds, that he wishes he had
not had so much confidence in him, that it would
have been better that he should have required
an account of the expenditure that had taken
place, and that he hopes Mr. Lovegrove (which
is the agent's name) will account for it all
honestly.

Having now got our candidates to Gloucester,
it may be interesting to observe some of the
chief characteristics of a thoroughly impure
election; the system adopted by the local agents,
the manner of its carrying out, and some of the
chief points, both ludicrous and flagitious, which
come out in the extraordinary process called
"working an election." The first thing to be
done is, for the candidate, or more probably some
nameless friend who " acts for him" (whose
generic title, at Wakefield, appears to be The Man
in the Moon), to appoint an agent in the town
where the election takes place, and the next thing
is for all parties to have implicit confidence in
each other, or, in other words, to ask no
questions. The candidate, then, or his Man in the
Moon, sends for the agent, places the affair in
his hands, and ask no questions; then the agent
sends for some gentleman well known as not
being troubled with scruples, hands over to him
certain sums of money and asks no questions;
then the gentleman without scruples sends for a
number of other gentlemen without scruples,
hands the moneys over to them to disburse in
the expenses of the election, and asks no questions.