House, and in his place, move for an
inquiry into the claims of Ozias Bridlegoose,
Esquire?

What is to become of the dim, mysterious
legionary horde whom I have hastily alluded
to, as the satellites of Bridlegoose? Take
the celebrated Mr. Daggs for instance. Daggs
was originally, I believe, a horse-chaunter,
and is to this day a sporting character of
considerable note. After he got over his little
difficulties in the horse-chaunting line, which
resulted in an appeal to the Cæsar sitting in
Basinghall Street, he became a "frequenter
of races," and described himself as "On the
turf;" on which I have no doubt he very
frequently really was, with very little to cover
him. Some success in the conduct of the
noble game, "red, black, blue, feather and
star," emboldened him to take a public-house
of the gladiatorial order, in the athletic town
of Nottingham; and it was here, in his
Bonifacial capacity, that his marvellous aptitude
for electioneering was discovered by Mr.
Bridlegoose, then down in Nottingham on a
little business.

He became shortly afterwards the Murat
of the Napoleon of the hustings. He gave
up his public-house and rushed from the turf
to the poll with, an eagerness really surprising.
Now, Daggs had, I believe, about as
much faith in any political party as an
artilleryman has in pea-shooters; this, added to
a natural inaptitude for public speaking,
rendered him averse to supporting by any
demonstration of eloquence the particular
candidature in whose favour he was enlisted.
The strength of his genius lay in invention,
in resolution, in rapidity, and in subtlety.
He would turn an adverse voter's flank;
bribe him or, if positively unbribable, hocus,
kidnap, or mislead him, without ever offending
overtly the law or the prophets. He
was the sort of man who—if his chief told
him in London, that such and such a party
was short of such and such a number of votes,
in such and such a town, and that such votes
must be had within twenty hours—would put
five hundred sovereigns into his boots or his
umbrella, start off that minute by train without
further luggage; and, within the given
time, would bring his voters and their votes
up to the poll booth, dead or alive. He had an
art of ensnaring all the bill-stickers in a town,
and leaving none to the opposite party: of
tearing down that party's placards should
they manage to get any pasted up; of having
mud thrown at their hotels; of getting the windows
of their Committee Rooms broken. He
had a hundred aliases: Blenkinsop, Mullington,
Pots, Cheesewright, Barwise, Tollymore,
Gutch, and the like. He had lodgings in
every district of London, and in every town
in the provinces, and had a name and a carpetbag
in each. His metropolitan landladies
believed him to be "something in the City;"
his provincial hostesses opined that he
"travelled in some line"—which, in truth, he
did. At the close of a successful election
his intimates—who were few—declared that
he would get silently drunk in a cab, driving
slowly from one public-house to another, and
being served in the vehicle. If, on the
contrary, the candidate for whom he was
employed were defeated, he would incontinently
disappear, and be seen no more until, weeks
afterwards, he was found in some far off town
under an inscrutable incognito, working with
misanthropical energy for some new candidate.
Now, see what Reform and Revolution
do! Daggs is to be done for. Does any
constitutional man in his five senses, believe
that this country can hold its present position
among nations, without Daggs?

Tom Beazly, too. Such a fellow for energy!
Such promptitude, such daring. Tom was
worth ten pounds a week (and got it), from
any party. He had a pictorial eye, had Tom;
and no man knew better than he how to
arrange a showy procession. There was
besides, something of a culinary turn in his
genius. He knew exactly how and in
what proportion to sprinkle the banners,
the insulting placards, the libellous effigies
of the rival candidates, the clap-trap of
the mottoes, the gaudiest of the devices.
He would give the candidates private lists
of the streets in which to stand up in
their carriages while passing through;
of the doors they were to bow to; of the
windows they were to kiss their hands
at. He knew how to bring a drunken
freeholder upright to the poll, and how to
prop up a drunken flag-holder with a sober
one. He was the best fugleman in England
for the hustings on nomination day. The
cheers and the hooting, the dead cats and
the stale eggs, the loud crash of music while
the rival candidate made his speech, the
groans and the Kentish fire, the fight, and the
screaming, were never better done than when
Tom gave the signal. He was not, perhaps,
a "good and safe man" like Daggs; but,
as commandant of irregular horse, as a
chief of free lances, as an able unscrupulous
persevering partisan, he was
positively unrivalled. If the flags are furled,
what is to become of Tom Beazly and
what is to become of the country without him!

What is to become of the myriad swarms
of the miscellaneous army of understrappers?
What is to become of the "witness Buggles,"
who is ostensibly a small bootmaker somewhere
in Northamptonshire; but who, it appears,
has had an occult influence over elections for
five-and-twenty years? What is to become
of all the men in drab and brown and
grey; of all the men in cloaks and
macintoshes, who come like shadows at election
times and so depart? What is to become
of the innumerable small fry of flag-bearers,
touters, and musicians? What is to become
of the noble army of election crimps and
election publicans, and of that intensely