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56 Hindley, one of the early free traders, was re-elected for Ashton, after a fierce and unprincipled opposition. Mr. J. B. Smith, soon afterwards to be more heard of in connection with the free-trade movement, was defeated at Blackburn only by corruption.

It was asserted by obstructives and protectionists that there was a reaction in their favour. There might be, but it was where the constituencies were so small as to render them easily corrupted, or where the leaven of old corruption had been allowed to remain. Fifty boroughs might have been named, returning seventy or eighty protectionists, the united constituencies of which did not exceed the number of voters in Manchester. The constituents of London, Westminster, Mary-le-bone, Finsbury, the Tower Hamlets, Southwark, and Lambeth representing a quarter of a million and a half of the inhabitants of the metropolis: the electors of Nottingham and Leicester, representing a of persons in the lace and hosiery manufactures the electors of Leeds, the centre and market of the woollen manufactures, and representing commercially a million of souls; the constituency of Birmingham, representing the opinions of half-a-million of persons in the iron trade; the electors of Sheffield, representing a quarter of a million of persons in various branches of the same trade; the electors of Glasgow, Paisley, and Greenock, representing the opinions of half-a-million of persons engaged in the cotton manufactures of the west of Scotland connected with the great shipping interests of the district; the electors of Edinburgh, the metropolis of Scotland; and of Dundee, Perth, and Aberdeen, representing another half-a-million of persons—all returned reformers.

Here then were thirty-eight members, the fair representatives, because elected where bribery and intimidation had little force, of some five millions of persons. The obstructives could not show a like constituency for all the