The genius of two or three well-known men would have taken advantage of the neutral position and prospects of that spot and its neighbourhood to found there a new industry, and give employment to an immense population of skilled artisans. The labour of these people, however, could only be set to work and supplemented by smoke. The mayor and town-council of N----, acting in the supposed interest of its inhabitants, determined they would have no smoky chimneys within their town. An Act of Parliament had been obtained sanctioning such municipal regulations as enabled these wiseacres to keep out the threatened innovation of gold-producing smoke. The new industry had, therefore, to settle down in the neighbourhood beyond municipal control. After this achievement had been successful, the surrounding district went on rapidly increasing in prosperity until it reached its present exalted position in that respect, and the trade of N---- went on diminishing to its present abject or exhausted condition. Meanwhile, also, the stage-coaches, which ran continuously through its streets--for N---- was on the great northern line of turnpike-road--dropping in their course a modicum of wealth for the inhabitants, were themselves put down by the unequal competition of a trunk railway; so that N---- became in course of time what it now is--a clean, shabby, pretentious, and poverty-stricken place. Stagnation amid activity distinguishes it. The grass grows in its High Street and Market-place. The remnant of independent people--that is, people who have a pecuniary independence--show airs, and walk about the neighbourhood under the belief that they are thought to be and are superior beings. The inhabitants who are not in this sense independent are craven, humiliated, impoverished, and corrupt. Yet N---- is a parliamentary borough; and, consequently, its present dilapidated, forlorn position supplies a fine opportunity for adventurous politicians--whether with or without brains, no matter--who have heavy purses, skilful agents, and good machinery at their command. Before I describe the special incidents of the case I am about to lay before the reader, let me supply some further particulars about the electoral conscience of this extraordinary old town. It has three classes of voters, who have been classified by a well-known Conservative electioneering agent (an attorney residing there); and a similar, or rather obverse, classification has no doubt been made by the other side. In the first list or classification are the really true and honest electors, men who would resent as an insult the offered bribe, sterling, worthy fellows, who would resist almost, or perhaps quite, to the death any attempt to coerce them to vote otherwise than as their consciences directed.