The election was held in Covent Garden, a large market-place in the open air.  There was a scaffold erected just before the door of a very handsome church, which is also called St. Paul’s, but which, however, is not to be compared to the cathedral.

A temporary edifice, formed only of boards and wood nailed together, was erected on the occasion.  It was called the hustings, and filled with benches; and at one end of it, where the benches ended, mats were laid, on which those who spoke to the people stood.  In the area before the hustings immense multitudes of people were assembled, of whom the greatest part seemed to be of the lowest order.  To this tumultuous crowd, however, the speakers often bowed very low, and always addressed them by the title of “gentlemen.”  Sir Cecil Wray was obliged to step forward and promise these same gentlemen, with hand and heart, that he would faithfully fulfil his duties as their representative.  He also made an apology because, on account of his long journey and ill-health, he had not been able to wait on them, as became him, at their respective houses.  The moment that he began to speak, even this rude rabble became all as quiet as the raging sea after a storm, only every now and then rending the air with the parliamentary cry of “Hear him! hear him!” and as soon as he had done speaking, they again vociferated aloud an universal “huzza,” every one at the same time waving his hat.

And now, being formally declared to have been legally chosen, he again bowed most profoundly, and returned thanks for the great honour done him, when a well-dressed man, whose name I could not learn, stepped forward, and in a well-indited speech congratulated both the chosen and the choosers.  “Upon my word,” said a gruff carter who stood near me, “that man speaks well.”

Even little boys clambered up and hung on the rails and on the lamp-posts; and as if the speeches had also been addressed to them, they too listened with the utmost attention, and they too testified their approbation of it by joining lustily in the three cheers and waving their hats.

All the enthusiasm of my earliest years kindled by the patriotism of the illustrious heroes of Rome.  Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony were now revived in my mind; and though all I had just seen and heard be, in fact, but the semblance of liberty, and that, too, tribunitial liberty, yet at that moment I thought it charming, and it warmed my heart.  Yes, depend on it, my friend, when you here see how, in the happy country, the lowest and meanest member of society thus unequivocally testifies the interest which he takes in everything of a public nature; when you see how even women and children bear a part in the great concerns of their country; in short, how high and low, rich and poor, all concur in declaring their feelings and their convictions that a carter, a common tar, or a scavenger, is still a man—­nay, an Englishman, and as such has his rights and privileges defined and known as exactly and as well as his king, or as his king’s minister—­take my word for it, you will feel yourself very differently affected from what you are when staring at our soldiers in their exercises at Berlin.