A great event has recently occurred in our parish.

A contest of paramount interest has just terminated; a parochial convulsion has taken place.

It has been succeeded by a glorious triumph, which the country--or at least the parish--it is all the same--will long remember.
We have had an election; an election for beadle.

The supporters of the old beadle system have been defeated in their stronghold, and the advocates of the great new beadle principles have achieved a proud victory.
Our parish, which, like all other parishes, is a little world of its own, has long been divided into two parties, whose contentions, slumbering for a while, have never failed to burst forth with unabated vigour, on any occasion on which they could by possibility be renewed.

Watching-rates, lighting-rates, paving-rates, sewer's-rates, church-rates, poor's-rates--all sorts of rates, have been in their turns the subjects of a grand struggle; and as to questions of patronage, the asperity and determination with which they have been contested is scarcely credible.
The leader of the official party--the steady advocate of the churchwardens, and the unflinching supporter of the overseers--is an old gentleman who lives in our row.