NOT ROXBURGH BUT STAIR.
TO THE EDITOR OP THE SPECTATOR.
28th July 1841. SIB—I address you as a Spectator " who likes to get at the truth of things": and, sooth to say, in general you seem to be long-sighted and sharp-sighted enough ; but in your " Last Dying Speech of the Representative System," your eyes have not penetrated to Roxburghshire, otherwise you would not have- selected that county as an illustration of the failure of the principle of repre- sentation. The inactive neutrality of the Duke of ROXBURGH (for it was no. more) had no effect on the votes of his tenantry ; what his Agot voters (a. Whig invention, of which a goodly pile was manufactured under a Minto fore- man) may have done, I have not at present the means of saying; possibly they may have answered the end of their creation ; but the real tenantry of the land were unmoved, to their credit be it said. On the rest of the county the Duke's neutrality had no effect. SCOTT beat ELLIOT simply because the Conserva- tive voters felt confidence this time they would be protected in giving their votes; for even in Hawick, the capital of Miutoahire, the waters of Slitrig flowed untroubled to the end of the poll. Some disturbance took place after- wards, which is now, it appears, under legal investigation. Now turn your eyes Westward, and see what was going on in Wigtonshite. There was an illustration that would have gone far to prove your position. There we find a county transferred from BLAIR to DALRYMPLE simply by the purchase of an estate, a few days before the election, by the Earl of STAIR, (where the money came from, Die'l kens,) and the tenants, pledged to BLAIR, intimidated into voting for DALRYMPLE, nephew of the Earl of STAIR, with- out even the pretence of the legitimate influence of a landlord over an attached tenantry. And who is the Earl of STAIR? may be asked by some of your Southern readers: better known as Sir JOHN DALRYMPLE, the champion of independence and freedom of election, and the first fruit of the Reform Bill in Mid Lothian ! You can hardly be suspected of being a Whig in disguise; so, for truth's sake, set this matter right in your next paper, and put the saddle on the right galloway.
Your constant reader and an impartial LOOKER-ON.
Previous page
