“In one of our conversations here this time twelvemonth I desired my Lord Chatham to secure you a seat in the new parliament. He assured me he would, and, I am convinced, very sincerely.... Since that I have heard no more of it, which made me look out for some venal borough; and I spoke to a borough-jobber, and offered five and twenty hundred pounds for a secure seat in parliament; but he laughed at my offer, and said that there was no such thing as a borough to be had now, for the rich East and West Indians had secured them all, at the rate of three thousand pounds at least, but many at four thousand, _and two or three that he knew at five thousand_. This, I confess, has vexed me a good deal.” Much has been said about “Old Sarum” (Wilts) as being typical of the unabashed and confirmed borough-mongering and corruption which existed not only in the last century, but, in fact, until the larger measure of Reform carried in 1832. Representative government, conducted on the principles which prevailed in “hole-and-corner boroughs” until the passing of that bill against which even Sir Robert Peel protested as a dangerous innovation, certainly, for the most part, had but a theoretic existence, as a review of the facts sufficiently demonstrates. Amongst the statistics given in Stockdale’s “Parliamentary Guide” (1784), Dr. Willis writes that the borough of Old Sarum was then reduced to _one house_. It returned members in 23 Edw. 1, and then intermitted until 34 Edw. 3, since which time representatives were returned until its disfranchisement. These were at first elected in the county-court, as was then customary; from 1688, the right of election was in “the freeholders being burgage-holders” and the number was _seven_. In 1826, when the last parliament of George IV.’s reign assembled, this state of things was unaltered, the patron was the Earl of Caledon, and the mysterious seven remained. New Sarum, otherwise Salisbury, which had taken the place of “Old Sarum,” received its privileges by letters patent, 2 Hen. 3, which conferred on the bishops and canons _tanquam proprium dominicum_; afterwards confirmed by charter 34 Edw. 1. In 1784, there were about fifty-six voters; the right of election being “in the select number, that is, the mayor and corporation.” The Earl of Radnor and G. P. Jervoise were the patrons in 1826, when Viscount Folkestone and Wadham Wyndham were returned by the fifty-four electors then set down as the suffrage-holders.