ELECTION CONVEYANCING.
FROM THE GLOBE.
"While we are praising the devotedness of the people of France in favour of constitutional government, we see the electors of Surrey—not poor men like the people of the Faubourgs of Paris, but all of them pro- prietors, and the great majority in easy circumstances—virtually sur- rendering their electoral franchise rather than incur a few shillings' ex- pense or use their legs to be honest men ; for the place of polling is only a short day's walk from the most distant corner of the county. If we did not consider the force of habit, we should rejoice that the attack on liberty was not made in England : we should say, 'Here are men prepared for any baseness, who only retain the privileges of freemen, which they almost gratuitously betray and abuse, because no Government thinks it worth while to take it from them.' We entreat the electors individually to consider the disgrace of this state of things. If honest men are indif- ferent to an election contest, they should stay away; if they are interested, they should go at their own expense, and exercise their own rights at their own discretion. To make the exercise, or the mode of exercising it, dependent on a few shillings' expense or a little labour, degrades the electoral franchise in a manner which even the unsatisfactory state of Parliament does not justify ; it degrades the national character, and popular elections in general.'
The author of Pelham observes, that it is not in an Englishman to run the risk of catching cold by any disinterested exertion ; and it may be added to this remark, that it is not in the virtue of any pedestrian Englishman to resist a ride in a po-shay, as the ver- nacular tongue pronounces it. To go down three in a po-shay, with the elbows stuck out of window, and the eyes staring with delight upon the post-boys bumping up and down in the saddle in the traveller's service, is an enjoyment which it is not yet in British virtue to refuse. To be mistaken for gentlemen posting according to their custom, by the road-side strollers and helpers at inns, is a pleasure of the imagination of a stupendous kind to those worthy persons in whose judgment the constitution vests the choice of our representatives.
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