Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/130

 rebellion, it has been well observed, did not so much divide the country in support of any antagonistic and abstract principles, as range the contending forces on the side of the great leaders whose influence prevailed in the different parts of the kingdom.

The revolution brought a vast addition of earnestness into the business of choosing representatives. The great parties in the State began then to assume modern forms. The struggle for power became more intense, and electioneering, was converted into an art. But throughout the whole of this period, it must not be forgotten that all elections were governed by persons acting under a sense of the importance and responsibility of their work. By importance, it is not meant that they necessarily felt the serious public interests which the task involved. The importance and responsibility were regarded with a view to party strength and party confidence. Upon the management of these forces appeared to depend, at one time, the overthrow of a dynasty; at other times, certainly depended the overthrow of a minister. The objects of the leaders in any part of the country, in labouring in either cause, might have been their own profit or aggrandisement; but in order to succeed in these objects, however selfish, they were obliged to select the best instruments to strengthen and concentrate their power. Their own relative importance in the court and the country might depend on the success with which they brought up the combatants in the great field of political warfare. The growing activity of the press, the general diffusion of information, made it necessary, in later times, to collect a different class of men. The necessities of debate called for talent. Those who influenced the elections, whether for counties or boroughs, gave their attention more and more to this species of political action. Whether a borough was owned or governed by a whig or a tory,—whether bought to support an East Indian or a West Indian interest,—or whatever special or general object its