He had been backed by all the
sympathies of the American Senator who knew nothing of him or his
unfitness, and nothing whatever of the patriotism of the Marquis.
But he did know what was the population and what the constituency
of Liverpool, and also what were those of Quinborough. He supposed
that he knew what was the theory of representation in England, and
he understood correctly that hitherto the member for Quinborough
had been the nominee of that great lord. These things were horrid
to him. There was to his thinking a fiction,--more than fiction, a
falseness,--about all this which not only would but ought to bring
the country prostrate to the dust. When the working-man's
candidate, whose political programme consisted of a general
disbelief in all religions, received--by ballot!--only nine votes
from those 500 voters, the Senator declared to himself that the
country must be rotten to the core. It was not only that Britons
were slaves,--but that they "hugged their chains." To the gentleman
who assured him that the Right Honble. -- -- would make a much
better member of Parliament than Tom Bobster the plasterer from
Shoreditch he in vain tried to prove that the respective merits of
the two men had nothing to do with the question. It had been the
duty of those 500 voters to show to the world that in the exercise
of a privilege entrusted to them for the public service they had
not been under the dictation of their rich neighbour.
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