Moreover, the little Cowfold
clubs and parties understood what they were saying, and so far had an
advantage over the clubs and parties which, since the days of penny
newspapers, now discuss in Cowfold the designs of Russia, the
graduation of the Income Tax, or the merits and demerits of the
administration. The Cowfold horizon has now been widened, to use the
phrase of an enlightened gentleman who came down and lectured there
on the criminality of the advertisement duty; but unfortunately the
eyes remain the same. Cowfold now looks abroad, and is very eloquent
upon the fog in the distance, and the objects it thinks it sees
therein; but, alas! what it has gained in inclusive breadth it has
lost in definition. Politics, however, were not unknown in Cowfold;
for before 1832 it was a borough, and after 1832 it was one of the
principal polling-places for the county. Nevertheless it was only on
the eve of an election that anybody dabbled in them, and even then
they were very rudimentary. The science to most of the voters meant
nothing more than a preference of blue to yellow, or yellow to blue;
and women had nothing whatever to do with it, excepting that wives
always, of course, took their husbands' colours.
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