POLITICAL PERSUADERS.
Flu:vT's method with the electors of Wigan is well known. It consists in that kind of endearment called, in popular language, a Cornish hug, accompanied by a little pulley-hauling, so as not quite to dislocate the shoulders of the Anti-Reforming voters to whom it is applied. In the Scotch borough of Brtillbin;snme years ago, when the close corporation had manifested a strong desire to break faith with Mr.HumE, the Brechin populace—consisting chiefly of weavers, with their wives and children—rose man, woman, and child, and fell to pelting their Magistratis and Town-Council into decency of behaviour by force of drunt-headed cabbages. They intimated at the same time, pretty pTainV,..that if this gentle hint were not taken, harder arguments would. be used ;—lt was taken, and the weavers and the flints of the causeway lay down in peace. The people of Edinburgh, it will be seetkhy a note on the Scotch elections, are, in their various aggrtat and individual capacities, entreating the Town-Council to elect their eminent townsman, Mr. JEFFREY. Now we would not wish, assuredly, that the same spirit should govern the sober citizens of Edinburgh that animated the weavers of Brechin,—because an Edinburgh mob is no joke—the populace of Auld Reekie are serious, resolute folks, and go to their work, when once they are fairly committed, in a very desperate fashion. But though we deprecate violence there and everywhere, we would put it to the better feelings of the Town-Council, whether they ought, by persisting to the last mo- ment of their political existence in opposing the great majority of their respectable townsmen, to incur the heavy responsibility of provoking even the semblance of a riot on behalf of a cause which the rioters may persuade themselves would sanctify many things which a less hallowed one would not. We put it to them and to the Town-Councils all over Scotland, whether they are prepared —setting aside all risks of immediate personal consequences—to encounter, as they must do, the sneers, the contempt, the indigna- tion, the deep settled hatred of their countrymen, which must fol- low them to the grave, for their pertinacious obstinacy in attempt- ing—after all, only attempting—to thwart the national will. We know there are persons who, in the precise ratio of the force of the arguments offered to them, button themselves up to oppose it. These are the " I-will-be drowned—nobody-shall-help-me" men, who will not save themselves, precisely because they are strongly entreated to do so. They disdain to be forced to do any thing. Of this class, we think our neighbours have fewer specimens than ourselves. It is a John Bull vice. The Scotch are a more consi- derate, and, where their credit and their interest is concerned, a controllable race. Both credit and interest, we think, knock hard at their doors on the present occasion. Will they keep them knocking, or will they frankly, and with their national welcome, take them in ? Our hopes are that they will,—that they will discard now, as they soon must for ever, their Anti-Reform prejudices and those who have long fostered and fattened on them ; and join hands with their countrymen and with their neighbours in for- warding the great work, which must on, but which will on more smoothly and pleasantly with their assistance.
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