Mr. Clutterbuck's Election by Hilaire Belloc

The Mickleton election was a blow that sounded through England. The hardy mountaineers of Wales, to whom our discussions, save where they regard religion, so rarely appeal, knew that the manhood of the slate quarries was free; sailors, newly landed from distant climes, though singularly apathetic as a class to the glories of our party system, found themselves expected to lift one of their many glasses to the Mickleton election; and in the bowels of the earth the brawny miners of Durham alluded to Mr. Clutterbuck and his success in the simplest and most poignant of terms.

The thoughtful who direct the development of English Socialism had seen, long before, the capital nature of the crisis, and naturally deplored an expression of public opinion which by forbidding forced labour set so powerful an obstacle in the path of the ideal state; the strict party organs of the Opposition were also bound to deplore the result, but every sheet of independent position was agreed as to the significance of the election and few judges indeed since Jeffries have incurred the epithets, whether grave or severe, which had so long been withheld, and now, on the morrow of the election, fell from all sides upon the honest but narrow and pointed head of Mr. Justice Hunnybubble -- for Welch (concurring) was by now quite ignored, and the stronger man was the target of renown.