3-052-527 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The General Election: "two millions spent in election expenses, and I can't get a penny of it", 1880. '...it may be observed that, somehow or other, incorruptible as we all now are, decent, sober, honest, civil, polite, orderly, and quiet, in our electioneering business, the aggregate cost of the big job, now going on all over the United Kingdom, is still estimated at two millions sterling! A club of statistical inquirers might find useful occupation in seeking to ascertain the principal ways of spending this huge sum of money. How much of it pays for the hire, at an inordinate rate, of committee-rooms at the numerous public-houses? How much for hundreds of cabs engaged from morn till night? How much for printing enormous piles of handbills and placards, in coloured ink, with great varieties of form and size, and for their circulation, by hired messengers and billstickers, in every street and lane of the town? How much for the enlistment of gangs of idle fellows, who are expected to do nothing but cheer and clap and stamp at the candidate's meetings, but are nowise forbidden to go and disturb those of the opposite party? We may well pause for a reply to these questions; they are not likely to be soon answered by the knowing managers'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.