In the year 1820 all the towns north of Tweed together contained fewer voters than are now on the rolls of the single burgh of Hawick, and all the counties together contained fewer voters than are now on the register of Roxburghshire.

So small a band of electors was easily manipulated by a party leader who had the patronage of India at his command.

The three Presidencies were flooded with the sons and nephews of men who were lucky enough to have a seat in a Town Council, or a superiority in a rural district; and fortunate it was for our empire that the responsibilities of that noblest of all careers soon educated young Indian Civil Servants into something higher than mere adherents of a political party.
While the will of the nation was paralysed within the senate, effectual care was taken that its voice should not be heard without.

The press was gagged in England, and throttled in Scotland.

Every speech, or sermon, or pamphlet, the substance of which a Crown lawyer could torture into a semblance of sedition, sent its author to the jail, the hulks, or the pillory.