Hitherto the contest for this distinguished borough had been, to use the language of Lord Lansmere, "conducted in the spirit of gentlemen,"-- that is to say, the only opponents to the Lansmere interest had been found in one or the other of the two rival families in the same county; and as the earl was a hospitable, courteous man, much respected and liked by the neighbouring gentry, so the hostile candidate had always interlarded his speeches with profuse compliments to his Lordship's high character, and civil expressions as to his Lordship's candidate.

But, thanks to successive elections, one of these two families had come to an end, and its actual representative was now residing within the Rules of the Bench; the head of the other family was the sitting member, and, by an amicable agreement with the Lansinere interest, he remained as neutral as it is in the power of any sitting member to be amidst the passions of an intractable committee.

Accordingly it had been hoped that Egerton would come in without opposition, when, the very day on which he had abruptly left the place, a handbill, signed "Haverill Dashmore, Captain R.N., Baker Street, Portman Square," announced, in very spirited language, the intention of that gentleman "to emancipate the borough from the unconstitutional domination of an oligarchical faction, not with a view to his own political aggrandizement,--indeed at great personal inconvenience,--but actuated solely by abhorrence to tyranny, and patriotic passion for the purity of election." This announcement was followed, within two hours, by the arrival of Captain Dashmore himself, in a carriage and four, covered with yellow favours, and filled, inside and out, with harumscarum-looking friends, who had come down with him to share the canvass and partake the fun.
Captain Dashmore was a thorough sailor, who had, however, conceived a disgust to the profession from the date in which a minister's nephew had been appointed to the command of a ship to which the captain considered himself unquestionably entitled.

It is just to the minister to add that Captain Dashmore had shown as little regard for orders from a distance as had immortalized Nelson himself; but then the disobedience had not achieved the same redeeming success as that of Nelson, and Captain Dashmore ought to have thought himself fortunate in escaping a severer treatment than the loss of promotion.

But no man knows when he is well off; and retiring on half pay, just as he came into unexpected possession of some forty or fifty thousand pounds, bequeathed by a distant relation, Captain Dashmore was seized with a vindictive desire to enter parliament, and inflict oratorical chastisement on the Administration.
A very few hours sufficed to show the sea-captain to be a most capital electioneerer for a popular but not enlightened constituency.