The Commission appointed to examine into the condition of the borough¹ of Percycross cannot exactly be said to have made short work of it, for it sat daily for many consecutive² weeks, and examined half the voters in the town; but it made sharp work, and reported to the Speaker of the House such a tale of continual corruption³, that all the world knew that the borough would be disfranchised. The glory of Percycross was gone, and in regard to political influence it was to be treated as the cities of the plain, and blotted⁴ from off the face of existence. The learned gentlemen who formed the Commission had traced home to Mr. Griffenbottom's breeches-pockets large sums of money which had been expended⁵ in the borough for purposes of systematised corruption during the whole term of his connection with it;—and yet they were not very hard upon Mr. Griffenbottom personally in their report. He had spent the money no doubt, but had so spent it that at every election it appeared that he had not expected to spend it till the bills were sent to him. He frankly⁶ owned that the borough had been ruinous to him; had made a poor man of him,—but assured the Commission at the same time that all this had come from his continued innocence⁷. As every new election came round, he had hoped that that would at least be pure, and had been urgent in his instructions to his agents to that effect. He had at last learned, he said, that he was not a sufficient Hercules to cleanse⁸ so foul⁹ a stable. All this created no animosity against him in Percycross during the sitting of the Commission. His old friends, the Triggers, and Piles, and Spiveycombs, clung to him as closely as ever. Every man in Percycross knew that the borough was gone, and there really seemed at last to be something of actual

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