The Duke’s Mystery The Attorney and the Smuggler Swindling according To Act of Parliament Matrimonial Espionage SECRET SERVICE OR Recollections of a City Detective Recollections of a City Detective MY GREAT ELECTIONEERING TRICK. ABOUT twelve years ago there was an election anticipated in the Borough of N——. It was a notorious place for bribery, as I, who have been professionally concerned in many elections, perfectly well knew. It was an extraordinary town. It had once been a very flourishing place. A staple trade had been carried on there, and almost nowhere else; but an evil spirit of gentility pervaded its corporation in those days. The genius of two or three well-known men would have taken advantage of the neutral position and prospects of that spot and its neighbourhood to found there a new industry, and give employment to an immense population of skilled artisans. The labour of these people, however, could only be set to work and supplemented by smoke. The mayor and town-council of N——, acting in the supposed interest of its inhabitants, determined they would have no smoky chimneys within their town. An Act of Parliament had been obtained sanctioning such municipal regulations as enabled these wiseacres to keep out the threatened innovation of gold-producing smoke. The new industry had, therefore, to settle down in the neighbourhood beyond municipal control. After this achievement had been successful, the surrounding district went on rapidly increasing in prosperity until it reached its present exalted position in that respect, and the trade of N—— went on diminishing to its present abject or exhausted condition. Meanwhile, also, the stage-coaches, which ran continuously through its streets—for N—— was on the great northern line of turnpike-road—dropping in their course a modicum of wealth for the inhabitants, were themselves put down by the unequal competition of a trunk railway; so that N—— became in course of time what it now is—a clean, shabby, pretentious, and poverty-stricken place. Stagnation amid activity distinguishes it. The grass grows in its High Street and
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