Explore "Chippinge Borough" by Stanley J. Weyman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
If anything was certain in a political world so changed, it was certain that if the Reform Bill passed the Lords-in the teeth of those plaguy Bishops of whose opposition so much was heard-a Dissolution would immediately follow. To not a few of the members this contingency was a spectre, ever present, seated at bed and board, and able to defy the rules even of Almack's and Crockford's. For how could a gentleman, who had just given five thousand pounds for his seat, contemplate with equanimity a notice to quit, so rude and so premature? And worse, a notice to quit which meant extrusion into a world in which seats at five thousand for a Parliament would be few and far between; and fair agreements to pay a thousand a year while the privilege lasted, would be unknown!
Many a member asked loudly and querulously, "What will happen to the country if the Bill pass? " But more asked themselves in their hearts, and more often and more querulously, "What will happen to me if the Bill pass? How shall I fare at the hands of these new constituencies, which, unwelcome as a gipsy's brats, I am forced to bring into the world?"