borough of Gatton, in Surrey, with its estate and mansion as well as the power of electing two M.P.’s, set out, among its advantages: “No claims of insolent electors to evade; no impossible promises to make; no tinkers’ wives to kiss”! So kissing by candidates has fallen into disfavour, and the most candidates are expected to do is to pinch the cheeks of babies or chuck them under the chin, in the hope of inducing the parents to recognize the merits of the Unionist or Liberal or Labour cause. Perhaps canvassing ought to be included in the practices which are declared by statute to be illegal at elections. But its effect on the issue of the contest, especially in constituencies where the Parties are rather evenly divided, is sometimes decisive. The feeling of many electors is that in their votes they possess a favour to bestow. They like to be asked for it, and the candidate who comes to their houses, hat in hand, soliciting their support, usually gets it, at least from the non-party electors or the “wobblers.” In days gone by, even candidates with the highest sense of virtue and honour, public and private, had to woo the electors by a lavish expenditure of money. Lord Cochrane stood as a Whig for Honiton at a by-election in the spring of 1806 against Augustus Cavendish Bradshaw, who sought “a renewal of the confidence of the constituency” on accepting a place in the Tory Government. Bradshaw had paid five guineas a vote at the former election, and on this occasion expected to get returned unopposed at the reduced rate of two guineas; but on the appearance of Cochrane in the field he was compelled to raise his bounty to the old figure. “You need not ask me, my lord, who I vote for,” said a burgess to Cochrane; “I always vote for Mister Most.” The gallant seaman, however, refused to bribe at all, and got well beaten in consequence. How he turned his defeat to account makes an amusing story. After the election he sent the bellman round the town, directing those who had voted for him to go to his agent, Mr. Townsend, and receive ten guineas. The novelty of a defeated candidate paying double the current price of a vote—or, indeed, paying anything at all—made a great sensation. Cochrane states in his _Autobiography of a Seaman_ that his agent assured him he could have secured his return for less money. As the popular voice was in his favour a trifling judicious expenditure would have turned the scale. “I told Mr. Townsend,” he writes, “that such payment would have been bribery, which would not have accorded with my character as a reformer of abuses—a declaration which seemed highly to amuse him. Notwithstanding the explanation that the ten guineas was paid as a reward for having withstood the influence of bribery, the impression produced on the electoral mind by such unlooked-for liberality was simply this—that if I gave ten guineas for being beaten, my opponent had not paid half enough for being elected: a conclusion which, by a