The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-11-29 00:00:00

THE DUTIES OP A CANDIDATE.

The standing for offices is divided into diligence of
two kinds ; one of which must depend on the zeal of your
friends, the other on the inclinations of the people. The
zeal of your friends must be gained by kindness and ser-
vices done by you, by length of friendship, by the affa-
bility and pleasantness of your own nature. But the name
of friends is one used more extensively in a canvass for
offices than in any other occasion in life ; for now, every
one who shows you any goodwill whatever, every one who
is civil to you, or who comes to your house, must be
ranked in the number of your friends. But still it is the
most advantageous thing of all to be beloved by and
agreeable to those who are our friends from any more
honourable cause, such as relationship, affinity, or com-
panionship, or any other connexion. In the next place,
you must labour diligently to make every one, in propor-
tion as he is familiar and intimate with yon, love you,
and wish your honour to be advanced as much as possible ;
then all those of your tribe, your neighbours, your clients,
your freedmen, and, lastly, even your slaves ; for nearly
all the conversation with reference to a man's forensic
fame emanates from persons connected with his house.
Then you must make friends of every sort,—friends for
show, men illustrious from their rank and reputation,
who, even if they are not very effective as voters or can-
vassers, nevertheless add some dignity to the candidate,--
and magistrates, for the purpose of obtaining your rights,
among whom, the consuls especially, and next to them
the tribunes of the people, are men of preeminent influ-
ence in bringing over the centuries to your interests.
Those who have ever gained the votes of a tribe or of a
century through your influence, or who hope to do so, or
who have ever received, or who expect to receive, any
kindness from you, conciliate and make sure of by every
means in your power. For, for many years, ambitious
men have been labouring vigorously, with all their zeal
and energy, to obtain the objects of their ambition from
the men of their own tribe. And do you take pains with
these men, by all imaginable means, to cause them to be
eager in your cause with all their hearts and all their in-
clinations. And if men were only grateful, then all these
things ought to be ready done to your hand, as, in fact,
I trust that they are. For the last two years you have
laid under obligations four companies of citizens, who
may be of the greatest influence in aiding you in the
object of your ambition ,• those, namely, of Marcus Fun-
dnnius, of Quintus Galbus, of Caius Cornelius, and of
Caius Orcininus. And I know what these companies,
when they brought their consent to you, promised you
and assured you of most positively, for I was present.
Wherefore you must take care that, on this occasion, you
exact of them a requital for your services, by continually
reminding them, by asking them, by renewing your
kindnesses, by cultivating their goodwill; so as to let
them understand that they will never have any other op-
portunity of showing their gratitude. And, indeed, these
men will be excited to zeal in your behalf, both by hopes
of your services in future, and by a recollection of your
recent exertions in their cause. And altogether, since
your canvass is abundantly fortified by that kind of
friendship which you have gained by your defence of
causes, take care that, of all those men who are under
obligations to you, each man may have his part carefully
marked out and allotted to him. And as you have never
been troublesome to any one of them in any matter, take
care that they understand that you have reserved the
requital of all those obligations which you {kink that you
are entitled to demand at their hands, to the present time.
The whole of this treatise is of an equally prac-
tical and minutely painstaking description, n will

be found well worth the attention of gentlemen
seeking to obtain the " sweet voices" of the multi-
tude; and to their agents and active partizans it
will be invaluable.

Blanche the Huguenot. A Tale, By William

Anderson.

London : N. Cooke.

In this tale, which is intended to display the
cruelties and persecutions to which the children of
the Reformation were subjected in France, towards
the close of the seventeenth century ; and to give
illustration of the meekness and firmness with
which, in defiance of persecution and death, they
maintained their hold upon the lights of truth,
the author has ample scope for his genius. The
tale is a simple one, and is confined chiefly to the
experiences of one family ; .out of which, however,
the general history of the period, and the conscien-
tious, yet heroic struggles of the Reformers are
amply manifested. As a work of fiction it is highly
creditable to the talents of its author ; and it is
peculiarly suited to the spirit of the present times,
m which the strife for mastery on the part of
Popery and its unscrupulous adherents appears on
the eve of being revived. In an appendix to the
volume, which is very tastefully got up in all re-
spects, the Protestant reader will find a mine of
interesting and comforting wealth, in the form of
an abridgment of the life of Claude Brousson, a
Huguenot leader and preacher, who was executed
for his faith, at Montpellier, towards the close of
1698. In that memoir the reader will find many
curious and animating instances of calm fortitude
and unswerving resolution "to fight the good
fight." Truth is proverbially -said to be stranger
than fiction, here we find it, at least, quite as in-
teresting. The narrative is brief and stirring—
simple, yet telling and encouraging.