GREEN LAND FARAWAY 21

As put by one of their supporters, the object of the Whigs was
to remain in office, keep down their dangerous Radical allies "and-
gradually and safely bring about such reforms as should end—
though no one was clear how—the discontent of the industrial
working-classes. The' only object of the Tories seemed to be to
turn out the Whigs, though they had' little really to gain save
office by doing so. Every few years a general election took place,
and the party battle was then. transferred to the constituencies.
Here it took on a form peculiarly English, with mobs processing
through the streets with flags and banners, with party devices
and mottos and special tunes—"Bonnets of Blue" for the Tories
and "Old Dan Tucker" for the Whigs—with companies of hired
boxers and cabmen and paid toughs to intimidate the electors,
with free beer and breakfasts at the expense of the candidate in
every tavern, with the wooden hustings on which fine gentlemen
who sought the suffrages of a free people grinned and suffered,
while rotten eggs, oranges and rude shouts whizzed over, under
and sometimes at them. This popular saturnalia, wrhich was the
special prerogative of the poorest and roughest elements of tlie
community, served no apparent electoral purpose, for only a
comparatively few quiet and well-conducted persons possessed the
vote., and elections were decided mainly by local territorial
influence and the state of current opinion among the reading
classes.1 But it served the ancient English purpose of letting off
steam in a rough human way, and it helped to give uneducated
people a sense that they were taking part in the government of
the country without any of the disturbing consequences of their
actually doing so. It. gave a great deal of happiness and
excitement, not to the rich and discreet, but to the uncalculating
majority. It was becoming an increasing annoyance to respect-
able citizens of a liberal and reforming turn, who took every
opportunity of attacking its abuses and trying to do away with
it in the name of purer and more rational politics. For this
reason, despite all its noise, roughness and drunkenness, it was
already a dying institution.

From the bacchic tumult of the unenfranchised multitude
which attended its election, Parliament itself was far removed.
No boisterous breath of democracy would have been tolerated

1Bribery, though universally practised, had a far smaller effect on eighteenth and
early nineteenth century elections than is popularly supposed. For one thing, the
bribes of the rival candidates tended to cancel each other out.

E.S. ' ' ' . . • t