GERRYMANDERING.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.""]
Stn,—The following extract, from a letter received a few days since from an American friend, may interest your readers, as it may be new to most of them :—
" I see that your newspapers are borrowing another of our political terms in connection with the question of Redistribution.' As this process has, under our Constitution, to be gone through with every ten years on the basis established by the new Census, in more or less of our States the process of so.' fixing' districts as to make the most for the party then in power, early engaged the fertile Yankee brain; and, as a thing without a name cannot long exist with us, this new system of ' fixing' took its title from a past master' in the science. An honourable Governor of Massachusetts, one Elbridge -Gerry, the son (I think) of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence,' was the first to reduce the matter to a system ; and so completely did he succeed, that the system took and has ever since kept his name. A man shifted from one district to another for the Bake of his vote was a Gerryman f hence, to 'gerrymander' was to make a transfer of such men on a large scale. So now, when I see your writers talking of jerrimandering ' or jerimandering,' I feel like rising up and giving them the points for a correct spelling."
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