l
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, incumbered 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 elections 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 favors, 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. I do not seriously
think this Constitution, even to the wrecks of it, could survive five
triennial elections. If you are to fight the battle, you must put on
the armor of the ministry, you must call in the public to the aid of
private money. The expense of the last election has been computed (and I
am persuaded that it has not been overrated) at 1,500,000_l._,--three
shillings in the pound more in [than?] the land-tax. About the close of
the last Parliament and the beginning of this, several agents for
boroughs went about, and I remember well that it was in every one of
their mouths, "Sir, your election will cost you three thousand pounds,
if you are independent; but if the ministry supports you, it may be done
for two, and perhaps for less." And, indeed, the thing spoke itself.
Where a living was to be got for one, a commission in the army for
another, a lift in the navy for a third, and custom-house offices
scattered about without measure or number, who doubts but money may be
saved? The Treasury may even add money: but, indeed, it is superfluous.
A gentleman of two thousand a year, who meets another of the same
fortune, fights with equal arms; but if to on