The truth was, that he met with so many small mortifications
during the progress of the election, that the pleasure which he
would otherwise have felt in the final success of his scheme was
much diminished.
He had more than tacitly sanctioned bribery; and now that the
excitement was over, he regretted it: not entirely from
conscientious motives, though he was uneasy from the slight sense
of wrong-doing; but he was more pained, after all, to think that,
in the eyes of some of his townsmen, his hitherto spotless
character had received a blemish. He, who had been so stern and
severe a censor on the undue influence exercised by the opposite
party in all preceding elections, could not expect to be spared
by their adherents now, when there were rumours that the hands of
the scrupulous Dissenters were not clean. Before, it had been his
boast that neither friend nor enemy could say one word against
him; now, he was constantly afraid of an indictment for bribery,
and of being compelled to appear before a committee to swear to
his own share in the business.
His uneasy, fearful consciousness made him stricter and sterner
than ever; as if he would quench all wondering, slanderous talk
about him in the town by a renewed austerity of uprightness: that
the slack-principled Mr. Bradshaw of one month of ferment and
excitement might not be confounded with the highly conscientious
and deeply religious Mr.
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