It is to Gillray that we owe the version embodying the glorification of autocratic boroughmongering as “The Pacific Entrance of Earl Wolf into Blackhaven,” January, 1792. Before Lord Grey’s Reform Bill altered the constituencies, in the sordid old days of corrupt influence, when the representative system of electing parliaments was purely theoretical, a certain number of territorial magnates apportioned about half the constituencies between them; of this, the “upper order,” or aristocratic patrons, trafficked in the seats in exchange for “honours” for themselves, or lent their boroughs to support ministerial influence in return for places and pensions, or offices--sinecures for choice--in which to provide for their less opulent relations; thus in the old lists of place-holders, pensioners, and “ministerial patronage” may be traced the younger sons and cousins in several degrees, besides the names of those who have by marriage entered the families of the prime holders of “marketable ware,” otherwise parliamentary interest. When boroughmongering was a profession--a very highly paid one--and boroughs were farmed for sale, it might be expected that a less elevated class of adventurers would treat the question of buying and selling “seats” in parliament like any ordinary item of commerce, as was the fact; the markets fluctuated, thus we find Lord Chesterfield, whose authority is unquestionable, looking round for some venal borough to bring in that young hopeful to whom he addressed the famous “Letters,” thinking it a finishing part of a gentleman’s training to be in the House; the ex-ambassador communicated with an agent, proposing to pay “twenty-four hundred pounds for a seat,” presumably the price in Chesterfield’s younger days; but he found seats had risen to inordinate rates--up to five thousand pounds--owing to imported competition, chiefly rich factors returned home with fortunes from the East and West Indies. Bubb Dodington has set down in his “Diary” how he, the lordly proprietor of this said “marketable ware,” went about bargaining to bring in ministerial nominees for his five or six seats in exchange for places at the disposal of the administration; and instances might be multiplied to a tedious extent from the journals of the House containing the evidence of trafficking in boroughs and buying up voters, _en gros et en détail_, as disclosed on controverted elections.