The Westminster elections were direct
trials of strength between the government
and people. The expenses of some of those
contests may be judged of by the fact, that
the high-bailiff brought actions against Sir
Francis Burdett, and Lord Cochrane,to recover
fifteen hundred and seven pounds, charges for
an election; at which there was no contest,
and but one temporary hustings. One item
in the bill was forty-eight pounds for his
own coach-hire from Norfolk; where he
had been popping at partridges. Again, in
eighteen hundred and fourteen, the high-bailiff
of Westminster petitioned the House
of Commons for a compensation on account
of what he called his losses through executing
the King's writ. He stated that he had
bought his office for four thousand pounds;
that of this sum three thousand pounds had
been given to induce his predecessor to resign,
and one thousand pounds he had paid
to the dean and chapter for appointing him;
to the same body he had also agreed to pay
one hundred and fifty pounds a year, so long
as he retained the office. He looked principally
to the elections for a recompense.
The burgesses and other officials invariably
looked to an election as a recompense for
many losses. Up to the time of Fox's election,
in seventeen hundred and eighty, candidates
had themselves to bear all the expenses of
a contest. In seventeen hundred and forty-nine,
Lord Trentham, son of Earl Gower, and
brother-in-law to the Duke of Bedford, contested
Westminster with Sir George Vandeput.
After the election came a scrutiny,
which lasted for about five months. Irrespective
of the great expense of the election,
the scrutiny alone cost Lord Trentham, for
his share of the expenses, twenty thousand
pounds, and the whole contest so impoverished
the Gower estates, that they have hardly by
this day overcome the embarrassment it
caused. Sir George Vandeput's bill simply
for ribbons came to thirteen hundred and
two pounds. What may have been the cost
of the contest and scrutiny to Sir George we
have no means of guessing, except from one
of the Lansdowne manuscripts, which tells us
that on both sides more than three hundred
thousand pounds were spent.

Fox's elections introduced a new principle.
The public treasury, and the great party
leaders, paid a part of the expense.

Fox's first election, in the year seventeen
hundred and eighty, only cost his party sixteen
hundred pounds. In the election of
seventeen hundred and eighty-four, the
coalition of Fox and North, and the more
immediate coalition of Fox and Hood, led to
a contest of the purse, which lasted forty
days, and cost the Whig party upwards of
one hundred thousand pounds. Not content
with the forty days' polling, Sir Cecil Wray,
the defeated candidate, demanded a scrutiny,
which, after lasting ten months, was brought
to an end by a resolution of the House of
Commons. One vote alone that was made
subject to three days of scrutinising, cost Sir
Cecil Wray—

But it is worth while to speak in some
little detail of the history of Westminster
elections. They shall be made therefore the
subject of another paper.

OUR DUCASSE.

IN the first place, the reader will probably
ask me what I mean by Our Ducasse; for the
reader may look in vain for the word in a
French dictionary, if it is only a duodecimo or
an octavo volume, just as he or she may fruitlessly
search for an account of the thing itself
in the innumerable literary reminiscences of
successive tourists. Ducasses may, indeed,
be found pictorially represented by Teniers
and other Flemish painters, and also in
lithographs and the published sketch-books
of peripatetic foreign artists, which have
scarcely found their way to England. Ducasse
is best Englished by Country Fair,
from which, however, it differs in many
respects,--amongst others, that, whereas the
fair is fast dying out, and may speedily
become defunct, the ducasse retains all its
pristine vitality, and is alive and kicking,—
literally so.

The ducasse is a popular institution and a
national establishment, whose roots strike
deep, extending beyond the frontier of the
empire, as marked on the modern map, and
supported also by races of men in whose
veins—though subjects of France—there flows
but a slight admixture of true Gallic blood.
The foundations of the ducasse are as firm as
the hills. France has ignored, once on a time,
the existence of a Supreme Being; she has
abolished religious worship, and persecuted
Christian priests to the death; but she has
never decreed the suppression of the ducasse,
nor exiled its culinary and musical ministers,
nor imprisoned and guillotined men and
women suspected of the crime of dancing