Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/87

 prosecution of the petition from Newcastle. General Thompson says:—

"The effect of the law of elections is in the first place to make the election dependent on the exercise of bribery and intimidation, and in the next, to provide a vindictive power capable of being used against those who shall appeal to the professed remedy.

"I do not speak on either of these points without some personal experience. In July, 1837, I stood for Maidstone. The night before the election, a hundred voters sent to my friends, and stated that they would vote for me for five pounds a-piece, and they should ask a Tory eight. I declined; and the consequence was, that on the poll I was one hundred and forty behind instead of sixty a-head, as would have been the case if I had accepted the offer. Not very long afterwards another election took place; and though the state of the borough was notoriously as has been described, yet when the Liberal party were unwise enough to make an appeal to the existing law, their appeal was declared by a hostile majority to be frivolous and vexatious, and the individuals who were the securities were subjected to loss, in the same manner that I feel assured would be applied to myself, if I was found in the same position.

"On the other point I have more recent experience still. It is within your knowledge that I stood at the election of 1841 for Hull. I suppose nobody will dream of denying that bribery, the most extensive and orderly, was practised on every side but ours. The Whigs in fact began it as early as