them, and carrying the hustings by assault, demanding, “Bring down the poll-book--Proctor shall be the man.” The scattered remnants of a rival mob are retiring; one of these is exclaiming, “D---- ye, you dogs--we’ll match you all presently.” [Illustration: THE HUSTINGS AT BRENTFORD, MIDDLESEX ELECTION, 1768. SERJEANT GLYNN AND SIR W. BEAUCHAMP PROCTOR. [_Page 178._] The _Oxford Magazine_ (vol. i.) has printed the correspondence which ensued upon the disgraceful violence and the attack on the hustings, in which several persons were injured and at least one fatally. The candidate ultimately returned, John Glynn, began by addressing a “Letter to the Freeholders of Middlesex,” pledging himself that the blood of his constituents so wantonly shed should be vindicated, and the charge brought home both to the hired and the hirers--“the more exalted their stations and the more privileged their persons, the louder is the call for justice.” The serjeant continues, “The freedom of a county election is the last sacred privilege we have left; and it does not become any honest Englishman to wish to survive it. There is virtue still left in the country; we are come to a crisis, and the consequence of this struggle shall determine whether we shall be Slaves or Free.” Following suit, Sir W. Beauchamp Proctor also addressed a letter to the freeholders of Middlesex, rebutting the charges made against him. After referring to twenty years, during which, by fair and honourable means, he had endeavoured to obtain their esteem,-- “Calumniated as I have been during a long-depending canvass, I was in hopes that every topic of defamation had been exhausted; and I never expected that the daring and tumultuous interruption of last Tuesday’s poll would have been ascribed to me in so illiberal and inflammatory a style as my antagonist has thought proper to use. For his conduct in the course of this business the serjeant appeals to me, and I appeal to the sense of mankind, whether a _band of writers_ has not been let loose to be the _assassins of my reputation_? whether the serjeant has not, in a manner unworthy of a gentleman and a lawyer, exerted every effort to set up _usage_ in opposition to the law of the land, and endeavoured in a dictatorial manner to compel the sheriffs to close the poll in one day, to the prejudice of the electors, and in violation of the authority vested in the returning officers, by the wisdom of the legislature.” Proctor declared that he was not only struck by “the banditti,” but in the utmost peril of his life.