committee of the House of Commons; that he
was appearing as a witness (and a remarkably
unwilling one) before a committee of the
House of Lords, respecting the great Shellout
Bribery Case; that he was attending to the
registration of Conservative electors before
a revising barrister in a narrow lane in
Clerkenwell; that he was new slating the roof of
his cottage orné at Sydenham, in Kent; taking
the chair at the Farmers' Friend Society's
dinner at Marketpigton; rusticating with his
family at Hastings in Sussex; and
accompanying his eldest daughter to Nice for
the benefit of his health. If he had lived
eighty years ago he would have been hooted
down as a Cagliostro or a Count de Saint
Germain. But in these days natural magic
has superseded necromancy; and to gas,
steam, iron, and activity must be attributed
the greater portion of Mr. Bridlegoose's
ubiquity.

Now, I ask what is to become of such a
man as this if the standards of electioneering
are to be furled? Remember! This is the
man who brought in, in the year forty-three,
the great nabob, Sambo Lack, Esquire, who
was manifestly idiotic, who could not spell,
and who got so tipsy on nomination-day, that
he had to be wheeled from the hustings
on a truck; yet Bridlegoose brought him in
triumphantly, defeating the redoubtable
Ironsides—the man of the people—by a
tremendous majority, solely and purely by
the force of his (Bridlegoose's) electioneering
genius, and not—as was in a base and paltry
manner asserted by the opposite party—by
the brute cash force of Sambo Lack, Esquire.
Remember, this is the man who gave to Parliament
Lord Claude Wappentake, a nobleman
of such strong Saxon lineage and
tendencies, that in the excitement of his
speech from the hustings he roundly told
the mob that they were nothing better
than base-born churls, fit only—with iron
collars round their necks—to herd swine;
which undoubtedly true, but imprudent
words endangered his lordship's election,
and drew upon him a shower of dead cats,
brickbats, and oyster-shells, that endangered,
and in some degree damaged, his
lordship's head. Yet the undaunted Bridlegoose
rescued him from this dilemma, and
sent him in three days to Parliament, a
knight of the shire at the head of the poll.
It was Bridlegoose who strangled the Potbury
petition; else Scrubby Hedgehog, Esq., would
have been lost to the country. For what?—
for treating twenty voters with a quart of egg-
hot a-piece. Hear it, Nemesis! There was,
to be sure, a trifling accusation in addition,
that Mr. Hedgehog had kept all the public-houses
in Potbury open for nine days; but that
was not proved. It was this same Bridlegoose,
who unseated the monster Billyroller, the
flagitious profligate who gave a voter twopence
to purchase a pint of beer with, at the corner
of Brick Lane, Millington.

And finally, remember, Britons, it was
Bridlegoose: Bridlegoose, the Bayard of
Parliamentary agents: Bridlegoose without
fear and without reproach: Bridlegoose,
the dauntless adherent of Church and
State—who, when the Zerubbabel election
was going clearly against Sir John Scribe
and Longhorn Pharisee, Esquire, and when
the Radical candidate, Sir Rabbitskin Syder,
was two hundred votes ahead—suddenly
hit upon, devised, wrote, printed, and published,
that undying placard, declaring
that Sir R. Syder, having owned to a short
visit to Bombay—must necessarily be a
Brahmin, a worshipper of Juggernaut, an
adorer of Buddha's tooth, a disciple of Mumbo-
Jumbo, an adept in fetish rites, an advocate
of cannibalism, and an active member of the
Stranglaboy Thuggee Society; and which
immortal placard wound up with "Christian
Husbands and Fathers, will you vote for
this Iconoclast?" (which means, I rather
believe, image-breaker and not image-
worshipper, but it was a good word, and told
immensely), and was signed "A Protestant."
Was it not that stroke of Bridlegoose's
genius which floored Sir Rabbitskin (who
was as excellent a Christian gentleman as
you would wish to meet); which drove him
to leave Zerubbabel in disgust; and caused
the Scribe and Pharisee party to circulate a
report that he had left his bill at the
Golden Gridiron Hotel to be liquidated by
his committee?

What then, I ask again, is to become of
Ozias Bridlegoose? To take away banners,
bribery, and brass bands from such a man is to
break the crutch of a cripple; it is to
take the life-preserver from a burglar, to
break the wand of Prospero, and to draw
the false teeth of a beauty of sixty. What
is such a man to do when the electioneering
banner which has braved the battle and the
breeze for a thousand years (more or less)
has been furled? He cannot dig; to beg
he is ashamed. Furl your flags, and you roll
up Bridlegoose, the pride and ornament of
the collective wisdom of his country! You
pin him up, you label him as though he were
an object of curiosity in a museum—you put
him away on a dark shelf behind a glass;
and twenty years hence you will say, "This
is a sample of the thing called 'agent' who
'managed' elections when management was
necessary to send two honest men to represent
their countrymen in the great council of
the nation." I have heard something in my
time of justice to a neighbouring country; and
I stand out for justice to Bridlegoose. The
Palace Court people had compensation made
them; Deputy Chaffsvax has been ejected
from office upon a splendid retiring fortune
taken from the pockets of patentees; the
Hounslow Heath highwaymen, if they
did not get compensation, at least
petitioned for it; now, I want to know
what patriotic member will go down to the