certain services, not to any individual, but to the community; estates thus created were called allodial estates, or estates in frank or free pledge. As time wore on, some of the chief men disposed of part of their estates to others of lesser degree, who became their vassals; but the smallest allodial tenant was always a freeman. He was known in the Saxon tongue as a borse-holder (house-holder), from which we have the corruption burgess and burgage-holder. Gatton, Old Sarum, and Midhurst, were pure burgage-tenure boroughs. In the first, there was a house and one voter; in the others there was neither house nor inhabitant. The manner in which voters were made and unmade in boroughs possessing this franchise, and also how scot and lot electors were manufactured and maintained, has appeared in a previous number.
In the year 1832, before the passing of the Reform Bill, the House of Commons elected under these franchises, consisted of 658 members, of whom 152 were returned by less than 100 voters and 88 by less than 50 a-piece! Eighty-nine peers were patrons of 133 pocket-boroughs in the United Kingdom, returning 175 members. Sixty-five commoners had ninety-nine seats at their disposal in seventy boroughs, and thirty-nine members were nominated by self-elected corporations. The minister of the day had six boroughs returning nine members in all under his thumb. The Scotch counties—all under the domination of the lairds—sent thirty members. So that in the election of nearly four hundred members—more than half the House of Commons—the voice of the people of England was never heard.
Such was the state of the representation not thirty years ago! Who knows but that, upon the eve of a third Reform Bill, the editor of the Sixtieth Volume of "Once a Week," may accept an article from some author—now in his long clothes—finding quite as much to condemn in the new system we are about to found, as I have in that old one of which I now take my leave.
THE SCIENCE OF MATRIMONY.
MERELY PRELIMINARY.
here is a city called London. In that city there is a Club House. But whether that Club House is situated in the W., S.W., E.C., or W.C. district, the world shall never know from me. It is in one of the four. The unclubbable S., S.E., E., N.E., N.W., and N. districts are out of the question.
