of pudding, or windy dishonest interests of praise;
and not very perceptibly for any other interest whatever.
Neither Rigmarole nor Dolittle will accomplish any good or any
evil for this grimy Freeman, like giving him a five-pound note,
or refusing to give it him. It will be smoothest to vote
according to value received. That is the veritable fact; and he
indigent, like others that are not indigent, acts conformably
thereto.

Why, reader, truly, if they asked thee or me, Which way we meant
to vote?--were it not our likeliest answer: Neither way! I, as
a Tenpound Franchiser, will receive no bribe; but also I will
not vote for either of these men. Neither Rigmarole nor Dolittle
shall, by furtherance of mine, go and make laws for this country.
I will have no hand in such a mission. How dare I! If other men
cannot be got in England, a totally other sort of men, different
as light is from dark, as star-fire is from street-mud, what is
the use of votings, or of Parliaments in England? England ought
to resign herself; there is no hope or possibility for England.
If England cannot get her Knaves and Dastards 'arrested,' in
some degree, but only get them 'elected,' what is to become
of England?

I conclude, with all confidence, that England will verily have to
put an end to briberies on her Election Hustings and elsewhere,
at what cost soever;--and likewise that we, Electors and
Eligibles, one and all of us, for our own behoof and hers, cannot
too soon begin, at what cost soever, to put an end to
_bribeabilities_ in ourselves. The death-leprosy, attacked in
this manner, by purifying lotions from without, and by rallying
of the vital energies and purities from within, will probably
abate somewhat! It has otherwise no chance to abate.

Chapter III

The One Institution

What our Government can do in this grand Problem of the Working
Classes of England? Yes, supposing the insane Corn-Laws totally
abolished, all speech of them ended, and 'from ten to twenty
years of new possibility to live and find wages' conceded us in
consequence: What the English Government might be expected to
accomplish or attempt towards rendering the existence of our
Labouring Millions somewhat less anomalous, somewhat less
impossible, in the years that are to follow those 'ten or
twenty,' if either 'ten' or 'twenty' there be?

It is the most momentous question. For all this of the Corn-Law
Abrogation, and what can follow the