which came next in size. The right of voting at Westminster was
in the householders paying scot and lot; and the householders
paying scot and lot were many thousands. It is also to be
observed that their political education was much further advanced
than that of the great majority of the electors of the kingdom. A
burgess in a country town, or a forty shilling freeholder in an
agricultural district, then knew little about public affairs
except what he could learn from reading the Postman at the
alehouse, and from hearing, on the 30th of January, the 29th of
May or the 5th of November, a sermon in which questions of state
were discussed with more zeal than sense. But the citizen of
Westminster passed his days in the vicinity of the palace, of the
public offices, of the houses of parliament, of the courts of
law. He was familiar with the faces and voices of ministers,
senators and judges. In anxious times he walked in the great Hall
to pick up news. When there was an important trial, he looked
into the Court of King's Bench, and heard Cowper and Harcourt
contending, and Holt moderating between them. When there was an
interesting debate, in the House of Commons, he could at least
squeeze himself into the lobby or the Court of Requests, and hear
who had spoken, and how and what were the numbers on the
division. He lived in a region of coffeehouses, of booksellers'
shops, of clubs, of pamphlets, of newspapers, of theatres where
poignant allusions to the most exciting questions of the day
perpetually called forth applause and hisses, of pulpits where
the doctrines of the High Churchman, of the Low Churchman, of the
Nonjuror, of the Nonconformist, were explained and defended every
Sunday by the most eloquent and learned divines of every
persuasion. At that time, therefore, the metropolitan electors
were, as a class, decidedly superior in intelligence and