Simple eloquence prevailed with some, and with others flattery.

Then corruption became rampant, as was natural, the rich buying the votes of the poor; and votes were bought in various ways--by cheap food as well as by money, by lavish expenditure in games, by promises of land, and other means of bribery more or less overt.

This was bad, of course.

Every freeman should have given a vote according to his conscience.

But in what country--the millennium not having arrived in any--has this been achieved?
Though voting in England has not always been pure, we have not wished to do away with the votes of freemen and to submit everything to personal rule.