When the onerous duty of selecting a representative of the people’s voice, wishes, and will in the councils of the nation has been completed by the calm, deliberate, dispassionate, and disinterested decision of the enfranchised tithe of the city’s populace, the successful candidates are, or _were_, wont to receive installation from the hands of their constituents by a “toss up,” not, we would inform our countrymen of the “_sheeres_,” (meaning all other counties save Norfolk, Suffolk, and Kent)—not that they engage in any little gambling speculation, such as is usually known under a similar name, but that they are required to submit to be made shuttlecocks for some few hours, for the amusement of the admiring multitude; and seeing that the fun and frolic thus afforded is, or _was_, the sole share of nine-tenths of the population in the transaction of electing the “unruly member” that is to speak the hopes, wants, dissatisfactions, and grumblings of a large city, it may seem somewhat hard to them that they should be deprived of it. The order of carrying out this provincial mode of installation, consists in forming a grand procession, as it is called, made up of as many carriages and horsemen as the stables of the city and neighbourhood, private and public, may contrive to turn out, the _colour_ and popularity of the candidate of course exercising its influence upon _quantity_ and _quality_. The days of velvet doublets and liveries of silver and gold being passed, the candidate makes no pretensions to display in the toilettes of the gentlemen—plain, sober black predominates throughout the mass; no shadow of a variation, save and except in the “dramatis personæ,” who take their stand upon the battledores provided for them, arrayed in full court costume or regimentals, as the case may be. To particularize more closely, it should be stated, that the battledores, as we have chosen to designate them, are wooden platforms, borne upon the shoulders of some two or three dozen men; the platform supports a chair elaborately ornamented, blue and silver, or purple and orange, as the successful candidates may be _blues_ or _purples_—Whigs or Tories. Besides the chair, the platform supports the fortunate M.P. himself, standing, aided in balancing himself in the elevated pinnacle of glory to which he has attained, by the back or elbows of the chair, which piece of luxury, we presume, must be intended solely as a symbol of the easy berth in prospect, since throughout the long sunny scorching perambulations of city streets and market-place, it may seldom, if ever, be ventured to be indulged in as a resting place. Meantime, every window, balcony, house-top, church-tower, and parapet-wall, has been lined with anxious and eager lookers-on—every space and avenue leading to or adjoining the line of march has been thronged; flags, banners, &c. &c., have been marshalled into the procession, whose pathway is cleared and protected by