d the country was plunged
into a general election. At that time, it should be remembered, an
election was a very different sort of event from that which bears the
same name at the present day. An election contest could then,
according to the extent and nature of the constituency, run on for a
time not exceeding fifteen days, and it was accompanied by a practice
of bribery, lavish, open, shameless, and profligate, such as is totally
unknown to our more modern times, and such as our habits and feelings,
no more than our laws, would tolerate. Intimidation and violence were
also parts of every fiercely contested election, and those whom the law
excluded from any part in the struggle as electors were apt to find, in
that very exclusion, only another reason for taking part in it by the
use of physical force. Just at the time which we are now describing
there are many conditions which made a general election likely to be
especially stormy and turbulent.

The distress which prevailed throughout the country had in many
districts called up a spirit of something like {106} desperation, which
exhibited itself in a crime of almost entire novelty, the burning of
hayricks on farms. This offence became so widespread throughout large
parts of the country that it gave rise to theories about an organized
conspiracy against property which was supposed to be, in some vague
sort of way, an outcome of the socialistic excesses which had taken
place during the French Revolution and had been revived by the more
recent commotions in France. The probability is that the rick-burning
offences were, in the first instance, the outcome of sheer despair
seeking vengeance anywhere and anyhow for its own sufferings, and then
of the mere passion for imitation in crime which finds some manner of
illustration here and there at all periods of history. However that
may be, it is certain that the offences became very common, that they
were punished with merciless severity, and that the gallows was kept in
constant operation.

[Sidenote: 1830--A change in constitutional systems]

Now, it may be taken almost as a political axiom that whenever there is
great distress at the time of a general election it is certain to give
rise to some feeling of hostility against a Ministry, especially if the
Ministry had been for any length of time in power. A considerable
portion of the Tories had been turned against the Duke of Wellington
because, under the advice of