A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering 68

A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering 68

Sir S. Romilly (W) headed the poll with 5339 votes; Sir Francis Burdett

was a good second with 5238; Sir Murray Maxwell, the unsuccessful

candidate, polled 4808: the others were “nowhere”--Hunt, 84; Kinnaird,

65; Cartwright, 23.

 

[Illustration: HUNT, A RADICAL REFORMER.]

 

In the same spirit the satirists regarded as fair game for their shafts

of ridicule the new political section which had seceded from the

Whig party as being behind the age; these were the “root-and-branch

reformers,” who, from their electing to call themselves Radical

reformers, obtained the party designation of “Radicals.” The orator

Hunt is travestied in this guise.

 

The general turbulence of the times at this precise period is

graphically pictured in “The Law’s Delay.”

 

“Now greeting, hooting, and abuse,

To each man’s party prove of use,

And mud, and stones, and waving hats,

And broken heads, and putrid cats

Are offerings made to aid the cause

Of order, government, and laws.”

 

(_The Election Day._)

 

There appeared in 1819 “A Political Squib on the Westminster Election,

Covent Garden” (March 3), by G. Cruikshank. This etching forms

the frontispiece to a tract published April 20, 1819, for Bengo,

print-dealer, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. The somewhat mystifying

title of the election squib is “Patriot Allegory, Anarchical Fable,

and Licentious Parody,” and it purports to be written by Peregrine

Castigator. G. Cruikshank has availed himself of that long-suffering

animal, the British Lion; in this instance the monarch of the beasts

personates the successful candidate, the Hon. George Lamb being figured

as the lion. He is exhibited standing under the city gate, beneath a

portcullis, wreathed with laurels; his tail is lashed in anger, while

the unsuccessful candidates, as an additional ignominy to their defeat,

are travestied as the heads of a hydra trampled beneath their political

victor. John Cam Hobhouse (W) polled 3,861, and was beaten by G. Lamb

(C) with 4,465 votes. T. T. Wooler, the revolutionary publisher, for

whom Cruikshank was working in 1815, is personified as the “Black

Dwarf,” as his whilom ally ever after represented him; his duck’s-head

cap is made to exclaim, “Cartwright and ’38!!!” the next individual

says, “Quack! quack! quack!”--an allusion to the small minority of

votes polled by the Radical candidate at the Westminster election for

1819, vice Romilly deceased, when 8,364 votes were registered, and only

38 of these for Cartwright.

 

[Illustration: THE LAW’S DELAY. READING THE RIOT ACT. 1820. BY G.

CRUIKSHANK.

 

Showing the advantage and comfort of waiting the specified time after

reading the Riot Act to a Radical mob; or a British magistrate in the

discharge of his duty, and the people of England in the discharge of

theirs! See speeches of the Opposition--_Passim_.

 

[_Page 334._]

 

Major Cartwright, the “Drum-major of Sedition” of the ministerial

satirists, was one of the Radical reformers who laboured actively for

the reform of parliamentary abuses. He put up for Westminster in the

Radical interest in 1818 and 1819, but seems to have had no support. In

1820, Major Cartwright addressed a petition to the House of Commons for

the purpose of disclosing “that ninety-seven Lords usurped two hundred

seats in the Commons-House in violation of our Laws and Liberties.”

 

“_Resolved._ That it is a high infringement upon our Liberties

and Privileges for Lords of Parliament to concern themselves in

the Elections of members to serve for the Commons.” (_Journals

at the commencement of every Session._)

 

How far the measure of reform was needed in the corrupt system of

boroughmongering is clearly demonstrated by Major Cartwright’s--

 

“Lists and Tables of Peers of the Realm who have unlawfully

concerned themselves in the Election of members to serve for

the Commons in the Parliament which was then sitting (1820),

with the Counties and Towns where the unlawful interference of

Peers has operated, either by nomination or influence, with the

number of members unlawfully returned.”

 

For instance, the Dukes of Bedford and Rutland respectively returned

four representatives; the same number was in the nomination of the

Earls of Ailesbury, St. Germans, Mount Edgecumbe, etc., while such

powerful autocrats as the Earl of Lonsdale contrived to return eight

nominees, as did the Earl of Darlington; six members were returned

by the Duke of Norfolk and Earl Fitzwilliam respectively; while the

Dukes of Devonshire, Newcastle, and Northumberland, the Marquises

of Buckingham and Hertford, the Earl of Powis, and Baron Carrington

each managed to return five seats. To the calculations given in his

table, the petitioner added the Treasury patronage, then in the Earl

of Liverpool’s control, giving eleven members; the Admiralty, under

Viscount Melville’s patronage, imposing three members, the Ordnance

(Duke of Wellington) one--adding again, according to the calculations

given in Oldfield’s “Representative History” (vi. 289),--

 

“There are ninety wealthy Commoners who, for 102 vile sinks of

corruption over which they tyrannize, further dishonour the

House by forcing on it 137 members,” thus giving a total of no

less than 353 members, who, as Cartwright represented to the

House of Commons in his very remarkable Petition, [the Major

writes] “to use the words of the royal proclamation of the

30th July, 1819,” were created such “in gross violation of the

law, and to the palpable subversion of the constitution, being

corruptly or tyrannically imposed on the Commons.”

 

“The pure and undefiled principles of the Constitution” were inculcated

by Major Cartwright in his “Lectures on the British Constitution,”

“Letters to Lord Mayor Wood,” “Letters to Clarkson on African and

English Freedom,” “Resolutions and Proceedings of the Hampden Club,” “A

Bill of Rights and Liberties; or, an Act for restoring the Civil Branch

of the Constitution,” and the companion work, “A Bill of Free and Sure

Defence, for restoring the Military Branch.” The major was brimming

over with zeal, and had almost too good a case; unfortunately for the

enforcement of his reforms, he was too early in the field.

 

The coming elections of 1820 were preceded by several caricatures.

Those by George Cruikshank are the most meritorious, the artist’s

work for this date being at its best. He was at that time employed by

Humphrey, the print-publisher, of St. James’s Street, as a successor

to James Gillray, an honour the artist regarded with pride to the

close of his long career. On the 1st of January, John Cam Hobhouse,

who was then canvassing Westminster, and was this year to be sent to

parliament as the colleague of his friend, Sir Francis Burdett, was

exhibited as “Little Hob in the Well,” under the title of “A Trifling

Mistake--Corrected.” The diminutive statesman is exhibited in the

place of his confinement, a prison-cell; he is gloomily contemplating

two pictures on the wall, “St. Stephen’s Chapel _versus_ Newgate.” A

pile of manuscripts, blackened by the upsetting of an inkstand, and a

mouse-trap assist the allusions. “The Trifling Mistake” is placarded

on the wall in the indiscreet but pertinent utterances of the captive,

which, if truly set forth, may account for his incarceration.

 

“What prevents the people from walking down to the House and

pulling out the members by the ears, locking up their doors,

and flinging the key into the Thames? Is it any majesty which

lodges in the members of that assembly? Do we love them? Not

at all; we have an instinctive horror and disgust at the

abstract idea of a boroughmonger. Do we respect them? Not in

the least. Do we regard them as endowed with any superior

qualities? On the contrary, individually, there is scarcely a

poorer creature than your mere member of Parliament, though

in his corporate capacity the earth furnishes not so absolute

a bully. Their true practical protectors, then--the real

efficient anti-Reformers--are to be found at the Horse Guards

and the Knightsbridge Barracks. As long as the House of Commons

majorities are backed by the regimental muster-roll, so long

may those who have got the tax-power keep it,--and hang those

who resist.”

 

In the same month appeared another strong “anti-reform” caricature

from the same source--though, as we see by a later work, the artist’s

sympathies were at this time on the side of the reformers, while

Radical publishers of an advanced type were his chief employers,--“The

Root of King’s Evil--Lay the Axe to it,” January 14, 1820. A learned

prelate, seated in his library, is considerably scared by the

apparition of the red spectre, literally a root--possibly implying

the tree of liberty--planted in “le bonnet rouge,” and wearing the

cap of liberty. On a pike in one hand is the mitred head of a

bishop, in the other is another pike surmounted by a battered crown,

with the tricolour flag edged with crape, and inscribed “Blood,

Reform, and Plunder,” with a list of the “reds” and reformers in

juxtaposition--Watson, Thistlewood, Preston, Hooper, Waddington,

Harrison, Hunt, Pearson, Wood, Waithman, Parkins, etc. In the second

category are Cobbett, Carlile, Tom Paine, Burdett, Little Hob, Death,

and the Devil,--no King, etc. The prelate is interrogating the spectral

visitor: “In the name of Satan, what the Devil are you, and where were

you hatched?” “In Hell, your worship. I’m a Radical. Give me leave to

present you a list of my best friends.” “Burn’s Justice” stands open

at “Treason,” and a huge volume of “Etymology” stands exposed at the

definition of “Radical”--“_Ex Radix_ is a root, and _Calor_ is heat,

anger, strife; _q.d._--The root of all strife.”

 

A comprehensive view of the respective sections of Radicals and

Reformers on the dissolution of Parliament, February 29, 1820, is

afforded by one of G. Cruikshank’s most successful caricatures, which

may be considered, in point of execution, as among the works most

worthy of his reputation; it is entitled, “Coriolanus Addressing