Dickens's England Read Online Free PDF

the ‘New Domesday Book’ reported that fewer than 7,000 people owned four-fifths of the land.]
    Prince von Pückler-Muskau (trans. S. Austin), Tour by a German Prince (1832)
    PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS
    Anything like election in the plain sense of the word is unknown in England. Members are never chosen for parliament as deputies were for a Cortes, because they are the fittest persons to be deputed. Some seats are private property – that is, the right of voting belongs to a few householders, sometimes not more than half a dozen, and of course these votes are commanded by the owner of the estate. The fewer they are, the more easily they are managed. A great part of a borough in the west of England was consumed some years ago by fire, and the lord of the manor would not suffer the houses to be rebuilt for this reason. If such an estate be to be sold, it is publicly advertised as carrying with it the power of returning two members; sometimes that power is veiled under the modest phrase of a valuable appendage to the estate, or the desirable privilege of nominating seats in a certain assembly. Government hold many of these boroughs, and individuals buy in at others. . . . You will see then that the house of commons must necessarily be a manageable body. This is as it should be; the people have all the forms of freedom, and the crown governs them while they believe they govern themselves. Burleigh foresaw this, and said that to govern through a parliament was the securest method of exercising power.
    In other places, where the number of voters is something greater, so as to be too many for this kind of quiet and absolute control, the business is more difficult, and sometimes more expensive. The candidate then, instead of paying a settled sum to the lord of the borough, must deal individually with the constituents, who sell themselves to the highest bidder. Remember that an oath against bribery is required! A common mode of evading the letter of the oath is to lay a wager. ‘I will bet so much,’ says the agent of the candidate, ‘that you do not vote for us.’ ‘Done,’ says the voter freeman, goes to the hustings, gives his voice, and returns to receive the money, not as the price of his suffrage, but as the bet which he has won. . . . It is said that at Aylesbury a punch-bowl full of guineas stood upon the table in the committee-room, and the voters were helped out of it. The price of votes varies according to their number. In some places it is as low as forty shillings, in others, at Ilchester for instance, it is thirty pounds. ‘Thirty pounds,’ said the apothecary of the place on his examination, ‘is the price of an Ilchester voter.’ When he was asked how he came to know the sum so accurately, he replied, that he attended the families of the voters professionally, and his bills were paid at election times with the money. A set of such constituents once waited upon the member whom they had chosen, to request that he would vote against the minister. ‘D––n you!’ was his answer; ‘What! have I not bought you? And do you think I will not sell you?’
    Robert Southey, Letters from England (1807)
    A BED FOR THE NIGHT
    (I)
    Mr Jorrocks: A Countryman Visits London
    â€˜Hup they come, leavin’ their quiet country ’omes just as their sparrowgrass [asparagus] is ready for heatin’ and their roses begin to blow – neglectin’ their farms – maybe their families – leavin’ bulls to bail themselves, cattle to get out of the pound, and wagrants into the stocks, as they can; hup, I say, they come to town, to get stuck in garrets at inns with the use of filthy, cigar-smokin’, spitty, sandy-floored, sawdusty coffee-rooms, a ’underd and seventy-five steps below, at a price that’s perfectly appallin’. Vot misery is theirs! Down they come of a mornin’, after a restless, tumblin’, heated, noisy night, to