> with what he got, instead of partying, went to Edinburgh to get a first class education in moral philosophy
Scotland was the place to get such an education at the time.[0]
> decided to get elected. went to a very corrupt district where votes were bought for five guineas. campaigned on principles. lost heavily but paid all those who voted for him ten guineas after the fact. next year campaigned on principles again and won. when people came to him for the ten guineas, said “The former gift was for their disinterested conduct in not taking the bribe of five pounds from the agents of my opponent. For me to pay them now would be a violation of my own previously expressed principles”
Prior to the Reform Act 1832[1], each town with a Royal Charter had the right to elect two burgesses to the House of Commons. There were numerous 'rotten boroughs', such as Old Sarum, whose two burgesses were chosen by just seven electors, the rest of the population having moved downhill to Salisbury in the thirteenth century, or Dunwich, once one of the most important towns in England, but now washed away into the North Sea. Elections were not secret, and in rotten boroughs, electors could be bribed individually. Manchester, a bustling settlement of one million inhabitants by the time of the Act, on the other hand, was not chartered, and consequently had no burgesses in the Commons at all.