Theory, I know, would suppose, that every general election is to the
representative a day of judgment, in which he appears before his
constituents to account for the use of the talent with which they
entrusted him, and of the improvement he had made of it for the
public advantage. It would be so, if every corruptible
representative were to find an enlightened and incorruptible
constituent. But the practice and knowledge of the world will not
suffer us to be ignorant, that the Constitution on paper is one
thing, and in fact and experience is another. We must know that the
candidate, instead of trusting at his election to the testimony of
his behaviour in parliament, must bring the testimony of a large sum
of money, the capacity of liberal expense in entertainments, the
power of serving and obliging the rulers of corporations, of winning
over the popular leaders of political clubs, associations, and
neighbourhoods. 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