G.A. Steevens says an election is "madman's holiday;" but in the
last _Quarterly Review_ we find the following ludicrous supplemental
illustration.
Let a stranger be introduced, for the first time, to an election,
let him be shown a multitude of men reeling about the streets of a
borough-town, fighting within an inch of their lives, smashing windows
at the Black Bear, or where
"High in the street, o'erlooking all the place,
The Rampant Lion shows his kingly face;"
and yelling like those animals in Exeter 'Change at supper time; and
then let him be told that these worthies are choosing the senate of
England--persons to make the laws that are to bind them and their
children, property, limb, and life, and he would certainly think the
process unpropitious. Yet, in spite of it all, a number of individuals
are thus collected, who transact the business of the nation, and
represent its various interests tolerably well. The machinery is
hideous but it produces not a bad article.
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