h he supposed to be an
act forbidden.

There was, of course, an election for the new parliament, but it did not
greatly affect Uphill, as nobody had any votes, except Captain Carbonel,
the farmers, and the landlord of the "Fox and Hounds," and the place was
too far from Minsterham for any one to share in the election news,
except Dan Hewlett and Joe Todd, who tramped over thither to hear the
speeches, swell the riotous multitude, and partake of all the beer to
which both sides freely treated all comers. They came home full of
news, and reported in the bar of the "Fox and Hounds" that there were to
be grand doings in this new parliament; the people wasn't going to stand
it no longer, not if the right gentlemen got in; but there would be an
end of they machines, as made horses do men's work, and take the bread
from their poor children. Beer would be ever so much cheaper, and every
poor man would have a fat pig in his sty. That is, if Mr Bramdean, as
was the people's friend, got in.

"Why, he was the one as our Captain Gobbleall was agin," observed Cox,
who had come in to hear the news.

"To be sure he was; Gobbleall is hand and glove with all the tyrums.
Ha'n't he got a machine?" said Dan, in an oracular manner.

"No one will never tell me as how our captain ain't a friend o' the
people," returned Seddon. "Don't he get coals reasonable for us, and
didn't he head the petition for your pig, Jim, and draw it up, too?"

"Ay, but what right had he to say my missus shouldn't take it out of the
parish?" said Jim Parsons. "We'd a made a couple of pounds more, if
she'd been free to go her rounds, as Betty Blake did."

"Ay, that's the way of 'em. They grudges us everything what they don't
give themselves," said Dan, "and little of that, too."

No one understood the spirit which desired to make people independent,
and raise them above indiscriminate beggary, and Todd said, with a grim
laugh, "They would not see us make a little purse for ourselves, not if
they can help it."

Seddon feebly said the ladies was free enough with their gifts. "They
had never had no one before to help the women folk and the children."

"Pig's wash! Much good may it do 'em," said Dan, so contemptuously that
Seddon durst not utter another word in the general laugh, though he
carried home a little can of milk every day, and he and others well knew
the store that their wives set by the assistance of their little ones.

They knew it well eno