SEATS TO BE SOLD.
" Buy, buy, buy !"—Butcher is Clare Market.
PERHAPS the most curious feature in the approaching election is the general lack of candidates. There never was a period when the consoling prospect of warm contests was rarer than at present. Whence comes this? Are the candidates too poor ? The fall in rents may have done something, and the fall in com- mercial profits has clone much; but surely there is still enough of unemployed capital and to spare, for a brush in the boroughs, if not in counties. We suspect the cause lies deeper. A membership is not so good a thing as it once was, and it is more likely to fall in the market than to rise. Ministers can now do little for their dependants. They have cut the legs from below themselves by their retrench- ments ! Jobs are out of the question, and situations few, and such as do fall out require some brains and a little labour. If things go on at this rate, corporations will be starved into a sur- render of their privileges, and peers of their influence. When neither will sell, the holders will make a merit of giving them away.
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