Next day the polling began. It was a day of wild excitement. Beer and spirits and food were distributed _ad libitum_ to the whole population by one side and the other. Drunkenness was the only general characteristic of civilisation in that parliamentary borough by twelve o'clock on the day for electing one of the prime wisdoms of the country to represent that town in the Legislature of Great Britain. Money was being spent profusely in bribes; voters had been "bottled"--that is to say, made drunk and then fastened up in a public or other house. These were the men who could not be induced to vote for us, or who dared not so vote because of something or other, but who voluntarily submitted to this process as a mid-way of service to us. Some electors were at any risk drugged, and hindered from obeying the dictates of political feeling. Some men were taken out of the town in vehicles. Respectability of every kind hid its head. Ruffianism and common vice of every kind had all their own way. John Shufflebotham had not yet voted, nor had many of his friends. The Tories had lauded him as "a sterling, honest, worthy, good fellow;" as "a man of great political sagacity, who had yielded to the voice of reason," and "as one who had renounced the errors of political life, and determined to assert, in his own person, the rights of matured conscience." They had fawned upon him; they had coaxed and wheedled him; they had held out every kind of future inducement and deferred benefit before his eyes--but John Shufflebotham had not been induced to give a vote, or the pledge of a vote, to the Conservative. He had made no distinct or visible sign of yielding to us, still it was observed that he had not been so lavish in the censure of our candidate during the previous day, or during the day of election, as before. We had been prepared for his hostility, but hardly knew what to do with his neutrality. We had expected to find him leading a body of voters to the hustings for the Tories. Jem Smash, the head of our best gang of prizefighters, had accordingly received instructions to bestow the courtesy of his underlings upon the barber and the barber's friends.