these freemen, even if in their private
capacity they were sober, to be, in their elective
cacapacity, what they called as drunk as a lord.
On certain days the bell of an old church
tolled for an hour and brought our freemen
up to the guildhall, where they were met by
the high functionaries, and where measures
were discussed between both parties for the
profit of the town. The benefit of the town
was to be secured by the spending of the
large revenues of the corporation. Radicals
made themselves obnoxious at these meetings
by tirades against abuses and short-
comings ; but there was a way of stopping
noisy mouths. The mouth of a blacksmith
could be stopped by the discovery that
a church steeple required clamping with iron,
and that he had better do the job ; which
would be paid for very liberally by the
corporation. If a painter became troublesome,
the corporation waxed impatient of the dingy
walls of half its property, and even of the
No Popery scrawled over all its palings, and
invited Mr. Painter with all speed to make
things pleasanter. For noisy persons not
possessing businesses, there were provided
subsidies from the town-hutch, or treasury.
This system of keeping growlers quiet, was
called giving them a bone to pick.

It was a great time for freemen when
the day came for the annual mayor-
choosing in the Spital School. Small boys
attired as Guys, and blowing penny trumpets,
took possession of the streets that morning;
and, with a cry of Choose a new Mayor,
levied a large copper duty upon Dulminster.
The freemen had a glorious procession along
streets new dusted with sand; and, at the
dinner table, they fared sumptuously.

The manufacture of M.P.'s at Dulminster I
do not speak of as anything particularly
glorious, since it was no more than a part of
every freeman's business; one of those branches
of commerce in which the town had obtained
for itself some little distinction, and from
which its inhabitants derived a fixed revenue.
When an election was expected, freemen lost
no time in looking out for likely candidates;
preferring young men who belonged to their
old families, who had the key of the old family
cashbox, and who lived not farther than the
distance of a pleasant walk out of the town. The
last qualification they desired, because it was
usual at Dulminster for the freemen on
Sundays and half-holidays to stroll off in troops to
the houses of their members for a taste of their
strong ale, and a general investigation of their
pantries. The right sort of man having been
found, thirty or forty of our independent
electors used to proceed to him, in his parlour,
with a complimentary address and a formal
requisition that he would come forward to
protect the British Constitution. They then
sat down to his table, and ate heartily from
mighty joints of roast and boiled. The
oldest ale was broached for these important
freemen; choice wines (or wine with choice
names) were uncorked, and healths were
drunk in spirituous liquors. The
requisitionists didn't go home till morning ; and
some of them were usually picked up next
day snoring in the plantations, among which
—old inhabitants as they all were— they
had lost their way. That was the beginning
of the rescue of the constitution. In
the course of a few days, to the joy of the free-
men, their raw parliamentary material would
be converted into a candidate for their
enlightened suffrages, and the author of a
printed statement of political opinions.
Committees were immediately formed on his
behalf at all the inns and public-houses, where
every man ate and drank at the young gentleman's
expense. Freemen in want of money
became messengers with, for the time, the
salaries of ministers of state. Bell-ringing and
horn-blowing became familiar to us as the
chirps of sparrows. The old members issued
their addresses, and the contest was alive.
Trade was alive. All the old families were
at work shopping and canvassing ; there was
nothing in Dulminster that of an independent
elector they would not buy and pay for.
The ladies who wore turbans in the dress
circle of the Theatre Royal, were almost ready
to be kissed by the master chimney-sweep, if
such a condescension were preferred by him
to money, as the value of his plumper. All
was equality, fraternity, and love, with every
day scandal against somebody, placarded
through the streets and left upon shop
counters, and the best of fighting always
going on at pothouse doors, in the churchyard,
and in the market-place.

Election time was not the only source of
harvest to the innkeepers. They had
harvest, indeed, all the year round. Our hostelries
of course were classified: there were the
hotels frequented by the county families,
friends of old families, and persons on a level
with the ladies in the turbans; there were
the commercial inns of several grades, shared,
with commercial travellers, by small landed
proprietors, colliery agents, viewers, and the
upper class of farmers. There were long,
rambling, out of the way buildings, with
yards, chambers, stables, lofts, and taprooms,
gathered in a maze; to which country people,
pitmen, and their wives, and many more
betook themselves on a great number of
occassions.

Those were, of course, days of coaching.
Mails, and stage-coaches rattled over our
stones: there was a blowing of great horns
by night and day, a rumbling of travelling
carriages, and a great deal of crack and
flourish. Commercial travellers came in a
throng of gigs. Our largest commercial hotel
would have eighty such travellers arriving in
one evening; each with a gig or saddle-horse
to put up in the stables. Ostlers made money
in those days; and jolly times they were then
in the travellers' room at the Dolphin. Great
mercantile houses prided themselves on the