‘Come, come, give us one.’ ‘Well, I have not made up my mind yet, gentlemen.’ ‘Jobson!’ says a solemn voice, ‘didn’t you tell me the other night you wished well to this gentleman?’ ‘So I do; I wish well to everybody,’ replies the imperturbable Jobson. ‘Well, Jobson,’ exclaims another member of the committee, with a sigh, ‘who could have supposed that you would have been an enemy?’ ‘I don’t wish to be no enemy to no man, Mr. Trip.’ ‘Come, Jobson,’ says a jolly tanner, ‘if I wanted to be a Parliament man, I don’t think you could refuse me one!’ ‘I don’t think I could, Mr. Oakfield.’ ‘Well, then, give it to my friend.’ ‘Well, sir, I’ll think about it.’ ‘Leave him to me,’ says another member of the committee, with a significant look. ‘I know how to get round him. It’s all right.’ ‘Yes, leave him to Hayfield, Mr. Millbank; he knows how to manage him.’ But all the same, Jobson continues to look as little tractable and lamb-like as can be well fancied. And here, in a work which, in an unpretending shape, aspires to take neither an uninformed nor a partial view of the political history of the ten eventful years of the Reform struggle, we should pause for a moment to observe the strangeness, that only five years after the reconstruction of the electoral body by the Whig party, in a borough called into political existence by their policy, a manufacturing town, too, the candidate comprising in his person every quality and circumstance which could recommend him to the constituency, and his opponent the worst specimen of the Old Generation, a political adventurer, who owed the least disreputable part of his notoriety to his opposition to the Reform Bill; that in such a borough, under such circumstances, there should be a contest, and that, too, one of a very doubtful issue. What was the cause of this? Are we to seek it in the ‘Reaction’ of the Tadpoles and the Tapers? That would not be a satisfactory solution. Reaction, to a certain extent, is the law of human existence. In the particular state of affairs before us, England after the Reform Act, it never could be doubtful that Time would gradually, and in some instances rapidly, counteract the national impulse of 1832. There never could have been a question, for example, that the English counties would have reverted to their natural allegiance to their proprietors; but the results of the appeals to the third Estate in 1835 and 1837 are not to be accounted for by a mere readjustment of legitimate influences. The truth is, that, considerable as are the abilities of the Whig leaders, highly accomplished as many of them unquestionably must be acknowledged in parliamentary debate, experienced in council, sedulous in office, eminent as scholars, powerful from their position, the absence of individual influence, and of the pervading authority of a commanding mind, have been the cause of the fall of the Whig party.