•WILLIAM THE THIRD.
14 !)
himself from the humiliation of being called to the bar and re- chap.primanded on his knees. The bill went up to the Lords, and ■passed with great speed in spite of the opposition of Rochesterand Nottingham.*
The nature and extent of the change which the discovery of Bin forthe Assassination Plot had produced in the temper of the House faUon'ofof Commons and of the nation is strikingly illustrated by the Elocllons-history of a bill entitled a Bill for the further Regulation ofElections of Members of Parliament. The moneyed interestwas almost entirely Whig, and was therefore an object of dis-like to the Tories. The rapidly growing power of that interestwas generally regarded with jealousy by landowners whetherthey were Whigs or Tories. It was something new and mon-strous to see a trader from Lombard Street, who had no tie tothe soil of our island, and whose wealth was entirely personaland movable, post down to Devonshire or Sussex with a port-manteau full of guineas, offer himself as candidate for aborough in opposition to a neighbouring gentleman whose an-cestors had been regularly returned ever since the Wars of theRoses, and come in at the head of the poll. Yet even this wasnot the worst. More than one seat in Parliament, it was said,had been bought and sold over a dish of coffee at Garraway’s.
The purchaser had not been required even to go through theform of showing himself to the electors. Without leaving hiscounting house in Cheapside, he had been chosen to representa place which he had never seen. Such things were intolerable.
No man, it was said, ought to sit in the English legislature whowas not master of some hundreds of acres of English ground.**
A bill was accordingly brought in which provided that every
* Journals of the Commons and Lords; L'Hermitnge, April 1 7 ,. ^o*
1696.
** See the Freeholder’s Plea against Stockjobbing Elections of Parlia-ment Men, and the Considerations upon Corrupt Elections of Members toserve in Parliament. Both these pamphlets were published in 1701.