One of the most notorious of the rotten boroughs was Mitchell, Modishole, or, as it was sometimes called in error, S. Michael. It is a wretched hamlet on a bleak portion of the great backbone of Cornwall, exposed to every blast from the Atlantic, without trade, without manufacture, almost without agriculture, so poor and unremunerative is the soil. It owed its origin solely to the fact that it was a convenient centre for the distribution of contraband goods that had been run ashore in the bays between Crantock and Newquay. When raised into a borough it existed, without thriving, on the two demoralising businesses of smuggling and elections. In Parliamentary lists it figures as S. Michael’s, but the archangel has never had anything to do with it, never had even a chapel there. The place belongs in part to the parish of S. Enoder, in part to that of S. Newlyn. The name of Mitchell given it was surely given in satire, for in Cornish this word signifies greatness. The place consists at present of nineteen houses. At the time of its disfranchisement it had 180 inhabitants, but only three of these were qualified to vote, whose names were Retallack, Vincent, and Parker, and these three returned the two last members who sat for Mitchell. A few sycamore and ash and thorn trees brave the gales that sweep the desolate slope on which the old borough stands. It has a handsome old inn with granite porch, some quaint old houses, one with the date 1683 on the parvise, and a diminutive town hall. Whether the borough ever had a seal is uncertain: no impressions are known to exist. The town hall has gone through a series of uses since the place ceased to be a borough. For a while after 1832 it was a dame’s school, then was converted into a Wesleyan chapel, then into one of the Church of England, next into a manure store, then into a carpenter’s shop, and now it is a beer brewery, in a hamlet made up almost wholly of total abstainers. The place, as already said, consists of nineteen houses. There is not a shop there. The dame’s school has been transferred from the town hall to a one-roomed cottage, that crouches under a bank, and is overshadowed by sycamores. The privileges it possessed proved to it a curse, for if there were voters in it sufficiently independent to think differently from the patron, he tore down their dwellings. After the last election but one Sir Christopher Hawkins swept away numerous cottages from his land, so as to reduce the number of voters, not because they were recalcitrant, but because all demanded payment for their votes; and to diminish the voters, as he did, from eighty to three meant a corresponding reduction in election expenses. At the election of 1831 there was no voting at all. The steward invited some two dozen individuals to dine with him in the inn; of these three only were nominated to vote. A worm-eaten chair was thrust on the balcony of the inn, and the nominee of the patron was declared chosen and chaired.