Memoir of the Chisholm

202 RE-ELECTION.
being nearly double the amount of his majo-
rity in 1835. He did not, however, long re-
tain the honour of representing his native
county in Parliament ; for, upon his return to
London to attend his public duties, he was so
frequently compelled to be absent on account
of ill health, that, at length, in the following
spring, he came most reluctantly to the deter-
mination of resigning his seat.
There were other considerations also which
weighed strongly with him, and tended to the
same result. The most prominent of these
was doubtless the heavy expenditure already
forced upon him, by the recurrence, at very
short intervals of time, of two contests which
he had encountered for the representation of
the county, and the first of which had been
yet further aggravated by a petition before a
committee of the House of Commons. Ex-
penses such as these of course rendered much
more arduous the discharge of the important
duties which had devolved upon him : and, —
with an income never very large, and which
had been made still less by the discharge of
those obligations which, as the preceding
pages will have shown, he had in earlier years
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