Here, unfortunately, this admirable
system of " asking no questions" is at an end,
for it appears that these lower ministers, in the
actual working of the election, are obliged to ask
a great many questions. They go into people's
houses and ask whether they are behindhand
with their rent, and how much will clear them?
And then they say that they think they know a
party who will "shell out" to the amount
required, and they do not ask for a vote in return,
far from it, but they are sadly afraid that the
party aforesaid, who has strong political feelings,
will not " shell out" to anybody who does not
agree with him that Carden, or Monk, as the
case may be, is the man for Gloucester. Nor
are these the only questions that are asked.
Sometimes a gentleman is discovered at tea, and
is asked if that beverage is sweet enough, and,
if not, how many lumps of sugar he will take in
it; an innocent demand enough, unless it should
turn out that the lumps of sugar mean lumps
of gold, and that his tea will not be sweetened
unless he plumps for Price and Monk.

Examining the proceedings of these minor
agents in the "working of the election," we
shall find that, were it not that the excessive
seriousness of the subject makes it almost a
sacrilege to laugh at anything connected with
it, it would be impossible not to enjoy in an excessive
degree the highly humorous performance of
some of the lower actors in the ghastly melodrama.

The comedian who expressed himself as having
taken so much refreshment that he was " on a
running fuddle" all through the election; the
apparently maddened fly proprietor, who stated
that he had not been between the sheets at the
time of the election for twenty-six days and
nights, and who, with exquisite naïveté, wished
there had never been an election, and hoped
there would never be another; the witness who
said that when he was offered 10l. for his vote,
Mr. Monk (the candidate), who was standing
near, on hearing money talked about, " very
properly" walked away; the henpecked gentleman
whose wife had received the bribe, and who said
the attorney " didn't give it to me, he gave it to
she, and she's missus and master too;" the
honourable voter whose principles are worth 2l,
since he had rather vote for Price and Monk at
8l. than for Carden at 10l; all these are
humorists of a high order, and worthy to rank
with that lawyer who said that if the election
had been carried on on the purity dodge, everybody
knows he would have had nothing to do
with it; or that ingenious family who got 80l
among them for their votes, including 3/. for a
dead man who had voted on the same terms at
previous elections—" post mortem!"

But what are all these to our pet witness,
Jacobs? Jacobs, the general factor, who begins
his evidence at once by saying, " I received 177l.
from Mr. John Wilton, and expended it in
bribery," and who adds immediately that the
first money he paid was 3/.—the only legitimate
payment he made— to Mr. Moses (!) for coming
from Liverpool to vote. This comedian, after
recounting several exploits in bribing, says,
' The next man— if I can call him a man— vash
vun Villiam Merrittsh. He had 5l. 7s. 6d. to
vote for Price and Monk. I had to vatch him
very close; he told me he should quarter on the
enemy, as Mr. Lovegrovesh vash crazy after
him." Jacobs sometimes meets with a voter
who is troubled with a conscience, such as Mr.
Welsh, who will not speak, but holds up five
fingers, by which he means five pounds, then
says he never takes the money, but on the
ingenious Jacobs proposing to play a game of
skittles or to jump with him for the amount,
finds his conscience at ease. Mr. Welsh, too, is
so scrupulous that he requests that the money
may not be put into his hand, but may be left on
the chimney-piece at a certain public-house where
he can find it; and, finally, this conscientious
personage, after receiving one pound in this
manner, is bought over by the enemy, and votes
for Carden. It was the opinion of Mr. Jacobs
that this Welsh was "a Uriah Heap sort of
man," and, indeed, he does not come out
altogether in an estimable character. When Jacobs
offers to pay his day's expenses if he will vote
on the Liberal side, he answers that a man
"ought to have more than a day's work to change
his mind." Upon this the wily Jacobs changes
his tactics, and wisely determines to get Mrs.
Welsh over to his side. " There were some nice
little childrensh playing about," he says, "and I
takes up vun of 'em and gives it a shilling; then
the goot voman varms up and says her husband
shall take two or three poundsh lees from us. I
paid her five pounds, and she vent and bought
pigs with it; but," adds the pork-abhorring
Jacobs, "I did not give it her for that."  Our
good friend, with all his cunning, is sometimes,
as the wisest of us may be, sadly taken in. " I
now come," he goes on to say, "to three bad
lots, Frederick Vingate, Thomas Vingate, and
Thomas Knight. I had lotsh of trouble with
those men. Their prices vash too high. They
talked a deal of nonsense, and said they wanted
fifteen poundsh a man; I told 'em I could not and
vould not give it; upon which they said they
could get it upon the other side, and be put upon
the committee, and all sorts of nice things. On
the morning of the poll they sends to me and
says, ' Vell, there is humbugging on the other
side,' and I gave 'em six poundsh each, and after
all they threw me over the bridge." Jacobs is
proud of his philosophy, and when a voter whom
lie has been hankering after goes over to the
enemy, and shouts aloud as he passes him in the
street, " A plumper for Carden!" our good friend
saj's, " He meant it to annoy me— but it did
not." There is no end, however, to Jacobs, and
we must cut him short most reluctantly, at once.

A word or two, now, on witnesses and
witness-boxes.

There are few more embarrassing positions in
the world than that of a witness in a witness-
box. Elevated high above the heads of his
audience, railed in as in a sort of pen, conscious
that all eyes are fixed upon him, the witness
becomes in almost every instance a confused and
guilty-looking being, and all the more so if he