Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/47

 person to whom he had told it gave it in a newspaper in a form which spoiled it. At one of Mr. Wilberforce's elections a body of his supporters had followed him to his own house, shouting "Wilberforce for ever." Seeing a young lady at oiae of the windows, they shouted " Miss Wilberforce for ever," to which she immediately replied —"God forbid! gentlemen, God forbid!" The report of this slight anecdote in the newspaper represented the young lady as making a speech to the "Worthy and Independent Electors" after the orthodox form of an Election Address before the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832; and is about as near truth as the stories told by the celebrated Mr. Pell of the Pickwick Papers, a practitioner in the London Insolvent Court, who represented himself as standing so high in the estimation of the Lord Chancellor, that his lordship said, "Mr. Pell, you are an honour to your profession—you could get any man through the Insolvent Debtors' Court."

Indeed the reporter of this anecdote in the newspaper, reminds one of a writer who professed to be acquainted with a certain attorney who has been supposed to be Mr. Pell of the Pickwick Papers, according to the description of Mr. Weller, senior,