The Express.
London, England, 1849-09-10 00:00:00

OUR REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM

WESTBURY.

Under the shadow of the " White Horse," in one
of the pleasantest valleys of Wiltshire, lies the little
irregular town or village of Westbury. It is • place
of small extent, no importance, and with but one at-
traction. As you turn into it the singular figure of
the gigantic "horse," eat out ages ago be our Saxon
ancestors, in the down upon the chalky hillside,
becomes startlingly visible. At one comer you see a
flowing tail and part of a hind leg; over the
chinch tower you may get a peep of an ear
and a bit of the mane ; at the next turning you will
see the monster's forelegs trotting out as if he were
coming down upon yeu at a round pace ; aid now
you have a full vie* of his nose and of his eye, the
latter a great patch of down as large as half-a-dozen
cart wheels, though the distance reduces its size to a
more moderate and probable dimension.
The " White Horse" is regarded at 'Westbury with
religious veneration. Once a year all the poor
population turn out to trim him. The grow-
ing grass is carefully cleared away, his hoofs
are cleaned out, his tail well cut and combed,
and his whiskers are trimmed quite smartly.
Ater a long winter, the "hone" frequently gets a
dirty sort of appearance from a distance, as it he had
been tearing with a cab thr ugh the mud in Picca-
dilly; but, after this cleaning down, he looks quite
smut again, and the people who have cleaned him go
round toe place collecting pennies and halfpence on
behalf of the " White Horse," which are not
grudged by those who can afford them. Ala', from
elutes we shall have presently to explatio, the trim-
ming of the horse is almost the only oocupation which
too many of the poor in Westbury at present have
or hope fer.
Westbury, of course, is a borough, or we should not
do it honour here. It was a borough antecedent to
the Reform Act,—a very rotten borough. The right
of voting was in the tenants of certain burgage holds,
which were possessed, together with laud,' adjoining
Westbury, by Sir Manasseh hlateteh Lopez. Origi-
nally they were the property of the Earls of Abing-
don, but family eircumatatees compe.led the sale of
their Westbu, y e state, end the burgage tenures and the
rights which tney possessed were, under the old system,
sold by public auction, by authority of a Master
in Chancery, and purchased by Sir Manas:eh Lopez
for 60,000 guineas! Sir Manasseh Lopez, al•hough a
Jew, obt 'lard a baronet ey, not in et m Deg uence of the pur-
chess., but for his "important services to government."
He expected to be made a peer, but having overstepped
the mark in baroughmongering, and being convicted of
bribery at Barnstaple and Orampound, at the Assizes
for the counties of Cornwall and Devon, this trafficker
in parliamentary honours was sentenced to imprison-
ment and expelled the House of Common', which
threw a ttifiing obstacle in the way of his promotion
toe scat with the lords spiritual and temporal.
Sir Manasseh Lopez was much too keen a bargainer
to make a purchase without being pretty sure of the
goodness of the investment. Westbury must have
paid him well. Two eats, each at four or five thousand
pounds per parliament, would have been very good
interest upon the 60,000 guineas, without any profit
on the land. Sir Manasseh Lopez got bath. In re-
turn he built a town ball in Westbury,—not a very
magnificent edifice, yet one, which small as are its
pretension., contrasts curiously with the cottages
around it.

The members for Westbury in Sir Manasseh's days
were always tory. In 1830 Sir Alexander Cray
Grant and Mr. Michael Preach rgabt, mho had been
inspt.et,,r of the opium mbnoply in Bengal, were the
occupants of the si ate. At this time came the Re-
furm Bill, and the borough of Westbury W4ll doomed
to diufranchibement. " Mine GA ! disfranchisement!"
There appeared to be neither hope nor help for it.
" 11rt 'Amy," said a public writer of that day,
"is a place which cannot retain any pri-
viler. In point of extent it is very small ; it
has very &w houses, and the property is abso-
lately worth very little as land, though its
peivilega of returning two members to the Com-
m:ma, at 8,0004 each, renders it invaluable to its
owner."