Sir SAMUEL WHALLEY went to the Mansionhouse on Tuesday, to
put a question to the Mayor on the subject of the pollingbooths for Marylebone. The candidate Knight wished to learn if the Knight installed were prepared to furnish the necessary machinery for the coming election. Lord PETER seems to have been. quite alarmed at the application— He said, he could by no means listen to any applicattot from a candidate at the present time. He was determined that there should be no ground of suspicion (however, remote) that he would depart from the impartial course which he had marked out for himself; and he thought that, at a period of election, a returning officer should be particularly cautious in listening to any candidate, in order to avoid the imputation of favouritism, so likely, at such a time, to be cast upon a person with such responsibility upon his shoulders. A Lord Mayor, under the awful circumstances of a contested election, must, it seems, be quite a Cresar's wife sort of personage : to suspect, and to convict, are in his case equivalent terms. We would not be uncharitable, but such extreme care to avoid suspicion always appears to us to indicate that there is at bottom a little ground for it. "The righteous is bold as a lion," says the Wise Man; and if the Mayor be as pure of guile as the noble beast, why may not he assume its magnanimity of port, instead of shrinking like a sprig of mimosa from the touch of a little finger? We know not whether it is a hint to the sensitive impartiality of the Lord Mayor, that the Times throws out on Thursday, about the power vested in the returning officer to adjourn the poll, and the anticipated necessity of having recourse to such a measure in .the case of Marylebone election. We have so much reliance on the good sense of the people, as to believe that no riot or obstruction will be offered to the electors, let them support whom they may: but we confess we cannot much rely on the firmness of a man who exhibits such symptoms of perturbation as those exhibited by Sir PETER LAURIE towards Sir SAMUEL WHALLEY. There is no calculating what effect a hundred or two of noisy gentlemen may produce on the nerves of a person who is so sorely shaken by the apparition of one.
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