Yesterday I dined with Robarts, and after dinner he gave me an account of the state of his borough (Maidstone), and as it is a tolerably fair sample probably of the real condition of the generality of boroughs, and of the principles and disposition of their constituencies, I will put it down. There are 1,200 voters; the Dissenters are very numerous and of every imaginable sect and persuasion. He has been member seventeen years; the place very corrupt. Formerly (before the Reform Bill), when the constituency was less numerous, the matter was easily and simply conducted; the price of votes was as regularly fixed as the price of bread--so much for a single vote and so much for a plumper, and this he had to pay. After the Reform Bill he resolved to pay no more money, as corruption was to cease. The consequence was that during his canvass none of the people who had formerly voted for him would promise him their votes. They all sulked and hesitated, and, in short, waited to see what would be offered them. I asked him what were the new constituencies. 'If possible worse than the old.' The people are generally alive to public affairs--look into the votes and speeches of members, give their opinions--but are universally corrupt. They have a sour feeling against what are nicknamed abuses, rail against _sinnicures_, as they call them, and descant upon the enormity of such things while they are forced to work all day long and their families have not enough to eat. But the one prevailing object among the whole community is to make money of their votes, and though he says there are some exceptions, they are very few indeed. Robarts too is a Reformer, and supports all Whig and reforming Governments; but he does so (like many others) from fear. What he most dreads is collision, and most desires is quiet, and he thinks non-resistance the best way. There is no reason to believe that other constituencies materially differ from this; what therefore is the result? Power has been transferred to a low class of persons; so low as to be dissatisfied and malignant, high enough to be half-instructed; so poor that money is an object to them, and without any principle which should deter them from getting it in any way they can: they may, on the whole, be considered as disaffected towards existing institutions, for when they contrast their own life of labour and privation with the wealth and splendour which they see around them, there is little difficulty in persuading them that they are grievously wronged, and that the wrong is in the nature of the institutions themselves. These general considerations make them therefore lean towards those who promise better things, and strive to introduce changes; but as their immediate wants are always uppermost, their votes are generally at the disposal of the highest bidder, whatever his politics may be. January 3rd, 1835 {p.185}