he Garden of Suffolk. There lived a
Mr. Bird, a Suffolk poet of some note in his day. On him I called. He
gave me a cordial welcome, kept me to dinner, and set me to play with his
children. Alas! Yoxford was to me what Capua was to Hannibal--I got no
further; in fact, my father traced me to the house, and I had nothing for
it but to abandon my London expedition and return home. I don't think I
was very sorry that my heroic enterprise had thus miscarried. What
annoyed me most was that I was sent home in an open cart, and as we got
into the street all the women came to their doors to see Master James
brought back. I did not like being thus paraded as a show. I found my
way to the little attic in which I slept, not quite so much of a hero as
I had felt myself in the early morn.

It was a stirring time. The nation was being stirred, as it was never
before or since, with the struggle for Reform. The excitement reached us
in our out-of-the-way village. We were all Whigs, all bursting with
hope. Yet some of the respectable people who feared Sir Thomas Gooch
were rather alarmed by my father's determination to vote against him--the
sitting Member--and to support the Liberal candidate. People do not read
Parliamentary debates now. They did then, and not a line was skipped. I
was a Radical. An old grocer in the village had lent me Hone's "House
that Jack Built," and similar pamphlets, all illustrated by Cruikshank.
My eyes were opened, and I had but a poor opinion of royalty and the Tory
Ministers and the place men and parasites and other creeping vermin that
infest courts. It is impossible to believe anything more rotten than
that glorious Constitution which the Tories told us was the palladium of
our liberties, the glory of our country, and the envy of surrounding
nations. The Ministry for the time being existed by bribery and
corruption. The M.P. bought his seat and sold his vote; the free and
independent electors did the same. The boroughs were almost entirely
rotten and for sale in consequence of the complicated state of voting in
them, and especially in those incorporated by charter. In one borough
the right was acquired by birth, in another by servitude, in another by
purchase, in a fourth by gift, in a fifth by marriage. In some these
rights were exercised by residents, in others by non-residents; in one
place by the mayor or bailiff and twelve aldermen only, as at Buckingham,
Malmesbury, &c.; in anoth