Polling day broke gloomily on Rye Tories. The country voters were brought into town at the Candidates\' expense, having received according to custom printed notices that the Colonel, or the Captain, "would endeavour to ensure to every elector access to the poll free from every sort of insult."

In Rye bells were ringing and bands were playing,[Pg 182] and the town looked quite strange with huge crowds surging through its grass-grown streets, which were, moreover, blocked with every kind of trap, gig, cart, and wain. About three hundred special constables had been enrolled for the occasion, and it was likely that they would be needed, for all the public-houses had been thrown open by the candidates.

In the market-place, where the hustings stood, a dense throng was packing itself, jostling and shoving, and—Reuben saw to his dismay as he drove up to the London Trader—showing strong Radical tendencies. Several Conservative banners waved from the windows of the public-house—"MacDonald the Farmer\'s Friend"—"MacDonald and Protection"—"Wheat at seventy shillings a quarter"—"Ratepayers! beware of Radical pickpockets." These had all been prepared at the beginning of the contest. The Radical banners bore but one device—"The Scott\'s Float Toll-gate." It waved everywhere, and any other banner which appeared in the streets was immediately seized and broken, the bearer being made to suffer so horribly for his convictions, that soon nobody could be found to carry one.

Every now and then the crowd would break into the latest rhymings of MacKinnon\'s poet:
"Who fill their pockets at Scott\'s Float,
And on their private Toll-gate doat,
While o\'er our hard-earned pence they gloat?
The Tories."

Reuben felt his heart sink, and his beer nearly choked him. Soon a vast struggle was raging round the hustings, as the voters fought their way through fists and sticks, often emerging—especially the Conservatives—with their clothes half torn off their backs and quite ruined by garbage. The special constables were useless, for their own feelings betrayed them, and unluckily even in their ranks the Radicals predominated. The[Pg 183] state of the poll at ten-thirty was twenty-seven for Captain MacKinnon and only eleven for Colonel MacDonald.

Speeches were made from time to time, but were lost in the general hubbub. One of the local butchers had delivered over his entire stock of entrails, skin and hoof cuttings, and old blood-puddings to the Radical cause, and Conservative Speakers were soon a sight to behold. When Reuben stood up his voice was drowned in shouts of "Ben the Gorilla! Stop the dirty animal!" while a bleeding sheep\'s head caught him full on the chest. Too proud to take his dismissal from the mob, he spoke unheard for five minutes, at the end of which he was silenced by half a brick, which hit his temple and stunned him sufficiently for Ditch and MacDonald to pull him away.

At twelve the poll stood at a hundred and one for the Captain and sixty-five for the Colonel. The Tories were getting desperate—they threw into the crowd handbills wet from the printers, declaring that MacDonald\'s toll-gate should not stand an hour after he was elected. But the crowd only sang derisively: