It is ten thousand times more necessary to show
himself a man of power, than a man of integrity, in almost all the
elections with which I have been acquainted. Elections, therefore,
become a matter of heavy expense; and if contests are frequent, to
many they will become a matter of an expense totally ruinous, which
no fortunes can bear; but least of all the landed fortunes,
encumbered as they often, indeed as they mostly are, with debts,
with portions, with jointures; and tied up in the hands of the
possessor by the limitations of settlement. It is a material, it is
in my opinion a lasting, consideration, in all the questions
concerning election. Let no one think the charges of election a
trivial matter.
The charge, therefore, of elections ought never to be lost sight of,
in a question concerning their frequency, because the grand object
you seek is independence. Independence of mind will ever be more or
less influenced by independence of fortune; and if, every three
years, the exhausting sluices of entertainments, drinkings, open
houses, to say nothing of bribery, are to be periodically drawn up
and renewed--if government favours, for which now, in some shape or
other, the whole race of men are candidates, are to be called for
upon every occasion, I see that private fortunes will be washed
away, and every, even to the least, trace of independence, borne
down by the torrent.
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