The Commissioners of inquiry into the corrupt practices at Cam-
bridge have produced a great blue book, just published, in which some pounds of paper are consumed in telling a common tale, with actors and accessories peculiar to the place. A jovial town is Cambridge, with a constituency under two thousand, mostly ho- nest electors, with some two hundred enfranchised non-electors- that is, electorswho prudentially abstain from politics—and a hun- dred or so of purchaseable electors. Both parties had their of- ficers; but the extreme ability of one on the Tory side usually secured the balance, and reduced the election of Members to a sleight-of-hand as certain as the hat-flowering or the gun-trick : and thus have two Members been returned by an agent at Cam- bridge. The blue book is a bulky memorandum, recalling a set- tled conviction, which needed such a refresher rather than farther proof. At the end of the session we all felt that these monstrous corruptions must be brought to a close. Weeks roll by, the sub- ject slumbers, the interest in " Reform " flags ; but at the end of a month or so, out comes another ponderous memorandum, to remind us that, whether we are " interested " about Reform or not, these scandals cannot continue without a hazardous disgrace to Parlia- ment.
