The business of the meeting, regarding the gluttony and drunkenness among the diversions, is centred in bribery. The Buff parliamentary agent has a seat next the unconscious municipal in the chair; before him is a ledger ruled with columns for “sure votes” and “doubtful.” The occupations of this important factotum are deranged by a flying brick from the opposition, which has struck home on his temple, bringing him down headlong, with destruction to objects around. Amid much horse-play and practical joking--to the strains of an extraordinary orchestra--promises of payment, bank-notes, and broad-pieces are being put into circulation. A lean Methodist tailor, with Blue sympathies, and who is suffering from qualms of conscience, is placed between two fires, the personal violence of his wife, with a half-shod offspring appealing for new shoes, while a clerkly agent is pressing on his acceptance a handful of silver coins to remove his pious scruples. Although bribery was so generally admitted, and stalked barefaced throughout the country, it was even then contrary to statute. With his usual irony, the painter has shown the “Act against Bribery and Corruption” turned into pipe-lights, and thrown aside in the tray of “long clays,” together with a packet of tobacco, for the use of smokers. This latter bears the name of “Kirton’s best,” and has its peculiar significance: Nichols records that Kirton “was a tobacconist by St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street, who ruined his health and constitution, as well as impaired his circumstances, by being busy in the Oxfordshire election of 1754.” The pictures on the walls, according to Hogarth’s practice, greatly assist the story: there is a view, presumably of Oxford from the river--the city is represented in flames; an undertaker’s escutcheon--the field sable bears three gold pieces, with a chevron, the motto “Speak and Have,” surmounted by an open mouth by way of crest proper. A portrait of William, Prince of Orange, as the Protestant prince of the Revolution, has been slashed across by rabid and indignant Jacobites, in allusion to the faction then supposed to have had much influence in Oxford; branches of laurel are entwined round a buff flag, marked “Liberty and Loyalty,” the standard of the party.