of the general result.  All the pens of Grub Street, all the presses of Little Britain, were hard at work.  Handbills for and against every candidate were sent to every voter.  The popular slogans on both sides were indefatigably repeated.  Presbyterian, Papist, Tool of Holland, Pensioner of France, were the appellations interchanged between the contending factions.  The Whig cry was that the Tory members of the last two Parliaments had, from a malignant desire to mortify the King, left the kingdom exposed to danger and insult, had unconstitutionally encroached both on the legislature and on the judicial functions of the House of Lords, had turned the House of Commons into a new Star Chamber, had used as instruments of capricious tyranny those privileges which ought never to be employed but in defence of freedom, had persecuted, without regard to law, to natural justice, or to decorum, the great Commander who had saved the state at La Hogue, the great Financier who had restored the currency and reestablished public credit, the great judge whom all persons not blinded by prejudice acknowledged to be, in virtue, in prudence, in learning and eloquence, the first of living English jurists and statesmen.  The Tories answered that they had been only too moderate, only too merciful; that they had used the Speaker’s warrant and the power of tacking only too sparingly; and that, if they ever again had a majority, the three Whig leaders who now imagined themselves secure should be impeached, not for high misdemeanours, but for high treason.  It soon appeared that these threats were not likely to be very speedily executed.  Four Whig and four Tory candidates contested the City of London.  The show of hands was for the Whigs.  A poll was demanded; and the Whigs polled nearly two votes to one.  Sir John Levison Gower, who was supposed to have ingratiated himself with the whole body of shopkeepers by some parts of his parliamentary conduct, was put up for Westminster on the Tory interest; and the electors were reminded by puffs in the newspapers of the services which he had rendered to trade.  But the dread of the French King, the Pope, and the Pretender, prevailed; and Sir John was at the bottom of the poll.  Southwark not only returned Whigs, but gave them instructions of the most Whiggish character.

In the country, parties were more nearly balanced than in the capital.  Yet the news from every quarter was that the Whigs had recovered part at least of the ground which they had lost.  Wharton had regained his ascendency in Buckinghamshire.  Musgrave was rejected by Westmoreland.  Nothing did more harm to the Tory candidates than the story of Poussin’s farewell supper.  We learn from their own acrimonious invectives that the unlucky discovery of the three members of Parliament at the Blue Posts cost thirty honest gentlemen their seats.  One of the criminals, Tredenham, escaped with impunity.  For the dominion of his family over the borough of St. Mawes was absolute even to a proverb.  The other two had the fate which they deserved.  Davenant ceased to sit for Bedwin.  Hammond, who had lately stood high in the favour of the University of Cambridge, was defeated by a great majority, and was succeeded by the glory of the Whig party, Isaac Newton.