Calcraft at the execution of Maria Clarke if you
will pay my expences from Wigan & Back & 5
pounds for the Job Please to send my expences
from Wigan to Ipswich & direct to the

& he will let me Know
Your obedient Servant

These letters, we repeat, are genuine. They
may set our readers thinking. It may be
well to think a little now and then, however
distasteful it be to do so, of this public teaching
by the finishing Schoolmaster, and to
consider how often he has at once begun and
ended— and how long he should continue to
begin and end— the only State Education the
State can adjust to the perfect satisfaction of
its conscience.

THE SUCCESSFUL CANDIDATE.
COMMITTEE-ROOM, WITH CLOSED DOORS.

YESTERDAY the members of this Committee
assembled at twelve o'clock, the Hon. Frank
Tossup in the chair. The proceedings were
taken down in sound-ciphers, by Messrs.
Johnstone's newly-invented Speech-reporter.

Mr. Serjeant Battledore opened the case for
the petitioners, by stating that Mr. Plumtree
Yellowboys, the sitting member, was
disqualified at the time of election by reason of
gross bribery and corruption, and that Sir
John Fairfield was justly entitled to be
regarded as the successful candidate in the
recent arduous contest. He called it arduous
— he might use a stronger term, and call it
abominable; nay, he should be justified in
applying a still stronger expression, and
designating it as infamous.

The Hon. Chairman. The learned counsel is
not justified in using such an expression.

Mr. Serjeant Battledore withdrew the term
"infamous," and would substitute the term
"famous," with the understanding that there
were very opposite sorts of fame in the world
— good fame, ill-fame, and so on, down to the
case in point. As to any statements and
allegations he had to make, seventeen
witnesses had been summoned, each of whom
could prove some important point; but out of
this number, no less than sixteen had
absconded, or been abducted— kidnapped, as he
was prepared to prove— by agents directly
or indirectly employed by the sitting member
— the infamous— he begged pardon— the
famously successful candidate, Mr. Plumtree
Yellowboys. Some of these kidnapped
witnesses had since been traced, hunted down,
dragged out, or fished up, from various
cunning, dark, and otherwise deep and
unparliamentary holes and corners. It would
be requisite to the clear understanding of
these nefarious transactions, that he should
state a few preliminary facts. Four distinct
political parties existed in the old borough of
Rotton-cum-Bandelore. There was the yellow
party, the piebald party, the pea-green, and
the pepper-and-salt. The first was characterised
by a fixed resistance against all reforms
and changes in our political, social, moral, and
religious institutions, with a thorough-going
system of dealing in voters by wholesale and
retail. Now, he would say, that of this party,
the "successful candidate," Mr. Plumtree—

The Hon. Chairman. I cannot allow this to
be said of the sitting member, after your
definition of the party.

Mr. Serjeant Battledore. The Honourable
Chairman will permit me to withdraw my
definition of the party, and then say that Mr.
Plumtree Yellowboys is the head of that
party.

Mr. Serjeant Racket. But my learned friend
cannot withdraw the offensive impression
from the minds of those who heard it, and
therefore, as counsel for the sitting member,
I must decidedly object to the name of Mr.
Yellowboys being attached to the party in
question.

Mr. Serjeant Battledore. I agree with the
learned gentleman. I cannot withdraw the
impression from the minds of those who
heard it. I will therefore proceed with my
statement. (Murmurs.) The second, or
piebald party, the learned serjeant went on
to explain, was characterised by a two-sided
policy. By turning each side alternately to
the light, as suited its immediate interests, it
was enabled, with a pretence of conscience,
to swear a thing was black, or white, or neither,
or both, while in point of fact it was yellow
at heart like the first party. (Sensation.)
The pea-green party was a simple-minded and
not a very numerous set, who thought that
honesty was the best policy, and that the
British Constitution having provided all the
means of a real and unsophistical election
by popular choice, was content to rest a
cause upon the result of a majority of votes
from independent electors. (A laugh.) Sir
John Fairfield was at the head of the party.
As for the pepper-and-salt party, it might be
described as a pretty numerous class who
formed the rabble of elections, a sort of
public-house and hustings mob, whose sole
object was to pelt or tickle, to deride or
applaud, to laugh, shout, or hiss, according
as they had been set on, and according, also,
to their humour, and the fumes of beer, and
gin, and tobacco, which they had imbibed.

The Hon. Chairman. I trust these
descriptions are mere oratorical displays. The
learned gentleman will now, perhaps,
proceed with his statement.

Mr. Serjeant Battledore. A few days previous
to the recent election, the good old town of
Rotton was filled by an immense concourse of
people, and one night— a very dark and
favourable night— Theophilus M'Squinney, who
had since absconded, hired a house in Leapfrog
Court, which had recently been a butcher's
shop, having a slaughter-house at the back,
opening into Lambkin's Mews. Down this
Mews the sheep and cattle used to be driven,
and so into the back premises of this house,