“Here’s a minion sent down to a corporate town, In hopes to be newly elected; By his prodigal show, you may easily know To the Court he is truly affected. “He ’as a knave by the hand, who has power to command All the votes in the corporation; Shoves a sum in his pocket, the D----l cries ‘Take it, ’Tis all for the good of the nation!’ “The wife, standing by, looks a little awry At the candidate’s way of addressing; But a priest stepping in avers bribery no sin, Since money’s a family blessing. “Say the boys, ‘Ye sad rogues, here are French wooden brogues, To reward your vile treacherous knavery; For such traitors as you are the rascally crew That betray the whole kingdom to slavery.’” The elections of 1727, in spite of the exertions of Bolingbroke and Pulteney in the _Craftsman_, and the intrigues of the former with the Duchess of Kendal, mistress of George I., were a disappointment to the Tories and “patriots,” _i.e._ Jacobites. On the death of George I. their prospects were even less promising. Queen Caroline, the consort of George II., was the steadfast friend of Walpole, and although the Bolingbroke faction paid their court to the mistress of the new king, as they had done in the last reign to that of his predecessor, they gained nothing by their motion, as George II. was governed by his wife in political questions. The hopes placed by the Tories in the elections were altogether frustrated; in the parliament chosen in 1727 the ministerial majority was greater than before, and their opponents were reduced to vent their mortification in strictures against the bribery, corruption, undue influence, and those secret intrigues in which they were themselves such adepts.