tends to meet the inclination of individuals, without considering that it is Punch whom it is buying, and that the puppet-show will continue only as long as public opinion does.
"It follows therefore from the whole of this, first, that you should never seek to extend your parliamentary interest. It is buying in a falling market, for in case of any constitutional convulsion, the change may happen in a moment; but if not, it must and is evidently taking place insensibly. Secondly, if a contest is inevitable, not for a small difference of expense or trouble to abandon or even risk any family interest such as you found it; but to calculate betimes, and according to circumstances to choose between the contest in question and purchasing elsewhere; or abandoning the whole upon public principles, by which I mean, appealing from the corporation or body of voters whoever they may be, to the town at large, and afterwards to the public upon grounds of ante-corruption, and upon principles of reason and freedom, and to consider the contest not as ended, but continued on a greater scale to the end of the chapter. Nothing is more easy, as you are acting all the time upon the defensive, in support of what you possess, and of rights which are generally presumed to belong to your property; besides, that power lost in one sense is power gained in another, for the moment you are unhampered with particular personal managements, everything becomes reversed, and you become the terror of evil doers, and your influence bears a just proportion to the extent of your property and the integrity of your conduct. It may be observed here, that towns will be always found the most open to conviction, and among them, the tradesmen and middling class of men. Next to them are the manufacturers, after which but at a great distance, comes the mercantile interest, for in fact they belong to no country, their wealth is movable, and they seek to gain by all, which they are in the habit of doing at the expense of every principle; but last of all come the country gentlemen and farmers, for the former have had both their fortunes and their understandings at a stand
