Crying for the Light, Vol. 2 [of 3] — Part 43

Happily the Baronet’s supporters made such a noise that the reply was unheard.

But there was a stronger influence at work.

‘What is the chief recommendation of Sir Watkin?’ asked one of Mr. Wentworth’s supporters of a friend of the Baronet’s.

‘Money, to be sure. He’s got it here,’ said the Baronet’s supporter, significantly slapping his pocket.

But the Conservative candidate had money as well. The question was, which had the longest purse.

‘And, then, look at the requisition presented to him,’ continued the Baronet’s friend.

‘Got up by his agent, as a matter of course, who was well paid for his work.’

‘All men who are his tradespeople, or tenants and dependents, or flunkies who want to be invited to the Hall. There has been no independent action in the matter.’

‘You are very green if you expect that in Sloville,’ continued the Baronet’s supporter. ‘If you ask nine men out of ten in the borough who they will vote for, the answer will be, “For them as I gets the most by.”’

It was too true. The Sloville people were as selfish as their representatives. They were like the voters of St. Albans, who, when the traffic on the great North Road was ruined by the railway, lamented that they had nothing to sell but their votes; or like the voters of Stafford, who requested Sheridan to vote against reform, as it was by the sale of votes that they chiefly got their money. They in this resembled the illustrious Samuel Johnson, who, upon his friend Thrale demurring to the expense of a contested election for Southwark, remarked: ‘The expense, if it were more, I should wish him to despise. Money is made for such purposes as this.’

It was an Irish M.P. who, when reproached with selling his country, thanked God that he had got a Government to sell. There were many of the Sloville electors who were of the Irishman’s way of thinking.

‘I suppose there is little chance for me,’ said Wentworth, as he walked home with the Unitarian minister—who had a large chapel, generally empty, but which had been crowded to suffocation to hear him utter his political programme. Wentworth, as the papers say, had received quite an ovation. He had come amongst them as a stranger; he had made them all friends; he was an effective speaker, and his audience were of his side in politics. Unfortunately, it consisted largely of excitable young people who had no votes. They had been told to do their duty: to support neither a half-hearted Liberal nor a thorough-going old Tory, but to rally round the gentleman from London. The Unitarian brother heartily endorsed that appeal. He had known Wentworth when he came to preach as a sapling from college. He had sympathized a good deal with him in his view. He had the Christian charity not to judge too harshly of a man who, it seemed to him, had in a sense gone wrong, but who was a man and a brother still.