ccasionally will come, they fully feel
how dreadful it is to be left out.

But to men aspiring to be members, or to those who having been
once fortunate have again to fight the battle without assurance of
success, the coming election must be matter of dread concern. Oh, how
delightful to hear that the long-talked-of rival has declined the
contest, and that the course is clear! or to find by a short canvass
that one's majority is safe, and the pleasures of crowing over an
unlucky, friendless foe quite secured!

No such gratification as this filled the bosom of Mr Moffat on
the morning of the Barchester election. To him had been brought
no positive assurance of success by his indefatigable agent, Mr
Nearthewinde. It was admitted on all sides that the contest would be
a very close one; and Mr Nearthewinde would not do more than assert
that they ought to win unless things went very wrong with them.

Mr Nearthewinde had other elections to attend to, and had not been
remaining at Courcy Castle ever since the coming of Miss Dunstable:
but he had been there, and at Barchester, as often as possible, and
Mr Moffat was made greatly uneasy by reflecting how very high the
bill would be.

The two parties had outdone each other in the loudness of their
assertions, that each would on his side conduct the election in
strict conformity to law. There was to be no bribery. Bribery! who,
indeed, in these days would dare to bribe; to give absolute money for
an absolute vote, and pay for such an article in downright palpable
sovereigns? No. Purity was much too rampant for that, and the means
of detection too well understood. But purity was to be carried much
further than this. There should be no treating; no hiring of two
hundred voters to act as messengers at twenty shillings a day in
looking up some four hundred other voters; no bands were to be paid
for; no carriages furnished; no ribbons supplied. British voters were
to vote, if vote they would, for the love and respect they bore to
their chosen candidate. If so actuated, they would not vote, they
might stay away; no other inducement would be offered.

So much was said loudly--very loudly--by each party; but,
nevertheless, Mr Moffat, early in these election days, began to have
some misgivings about the bill. The proclaimed arrangement had been
one exactly suitable to his taste; for Mr Moffat loved his money. He
was a man in whose breast the ambition of being great in the world,
and