A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering 57

A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering 57

“Tho’ in every street

All the voters you meet

The Duchess knows best how to court them,

Yet for outlying votes

In my petticoats,

I’ve found out a way to transport them!

 

“Eight trips in this way,

For Hood and for Wray,

I’ll make poll sixteen in one day.

Dear Wray, don’t despair,

My supplies by the air

Shall recover our losses on Monday!”

 

Walpole wrote under date, April 13th:--

 

“Mr. Fox has all the popularity in Westminster; and, indeed,

is so amiable and winning that, could he have stood in person

all over England, I question whether he would not have carried

the parliament. The beldams hate him; but most of the pretty

women in England are indefatigable in making interest for him;

the Duchess of Devonshire in particular. I am ashamed to say

how coarsely she has been received by some worse than tars. But

nothing has shocked me so much as what I heard this morning. At

Dover, they roasted a poor _fox_ alive by the most diabolical

allegory--a savage meanness that an Iroquois could not have

committed!” “During her canvass the Duchess made no scruple of

visiting the humblest of the electors, dazzling and enchanting

them by the fascination of her manner, the power of her beauty

and the influence of her high rank, and sometimes carrying off

to the hustings the meanest mechanic in her own carriage.”

 

“The Duchess of Devonshire,” writes Lord Cornwallis, on the

19th of April, “is indefatigable in her canvass for Fox. She

was in the most blackguard houses in Long Acre by eight o’clock

this morning.”

 

The fact of the duchess having purchased the vote of an impracticable

butcher by a kiss is said to be unquestionable. It was on one of these

occasions that the well-known compliment is said to have been made her

by an Irish mechanic, “_I could light my pipe at your eyes_.”

 

Of great beauty and unconquerable spirit, she tried all her powers of

persuasion on the shopkeepers of Westminster, as Earl Stanhope declares

in his “Life of Pitt”:--

 

“Other ladies, who could not rival her beauty, might at least

follow her example. Scarce a street or alley which they did not

canvass on behalf of him whom they persisted in calling the

‘Man of the People,’ at the very moment when the popular voice

was declaring against him.”

 

Pitt and his royal patron were, however, exerting every method to

secure the downfall of the redoubtable “Carlo Khan.” Up to the third

day of the polling, “Fox was in a minority, notwithstanding the immense

exertions that were made on his behalf. The Ministerial Party,”

according to the statement of their own historians, “were sanguine in

the hope of wresting from him the greatest and most enlightened, as

it was then considered, of all the represented boroughs of England.”

Pitt’s proud spirit was roused at the obstinacy of the contest, and,

unlike his more magnanimous if not greater rival, he lost patience

with his opponents; in a strain of acrimonious pleasantry he wrote

to Wilberforce, “Westminster goes on well in spite of the Duchess of

Devonshire and the other _Women of the People_, but when the poll will

close is uncertain;” this was on the seventh day of the poll, and Pitt

then little dreamt of its running for forty days uninterruptedly. By

the 23rd of April, the premier was evidently losing temper, and the

strain of electioneering was becoming tenser, as appears from a letter

written to his cousin, James Grenville, afterwards Lord Glastonbury:--

 

“MY DEAR SIR,

 

“Admiral Hood tells me he left Lord Nugent at Bath, disposed

to come to town if a vote at Westminster should be material. I

think from the state of the poll it may be very much so. There

is no doubt, I believe, of final success on a scrutiny, if we

are driven to it; but it is a great object to us to carry the

return for both in the first instance, and on every account

as great an object to Fox to prevent it. It is uncertain

how long the poll will continue, but pretty clear it cannot

be over till after Monday. If you will have the goodness to

state these circumstances to Lord Nugent, and encourage his

good designs, we shall be very much obliged to you; and still

more, should neither health nor particular engagements detain

you, if, besides prevailing upon him, you could give your own

personal assistance. At all events I hope you will forgive

my troubling you, and allow for the importunity of a hardened

electioneerer.... Mainwaring and Wilkes are considerably ahead

in Middlesex, and Lord Grimston has come in, instead of Halsey,

for Herts.”

 

Pitt further alludes to W. W. Grenville, his cousin, “the kissing young

gentleman” who visited Cowper in the course of his canvass, “I have

not yet heard the event of Bucks, but William was safe, and, by the

first day’s poll, Aubrey’s prospect seems very good.” John Aubrey was

returned second, and William Grenville was at the head of the poll.

 

Fox’s prospects were gradually improved as concerned his own seat at

Westminster; but the slaughter amongst his followers was altogether

unexampled, the muster-roll of “Fox’s Martyrs” grew ominously longer as

each election was determined. On the twenty-third day of the polling at

Covent Garden the Whig chief passed Sir Cecil Wray, and continued to

advance until the fortieth, when, by law, the contest closed. On the

17th of May, the poll stood--Lord Hood, 6,694; Fox, 6,237; Sir Cecil

Wray, 5,998.

 

“There was,” writes Earl Stanhope, “strong reason, however,

to suspect many fraudulent practices in the previous days,

since it seemed clear that the total number of votes recorded

was considerably beyond the number of persons entitled

to the franchise. For this reason Sir Cecil Wray at once

demanded a scrutiny, and the High Bailiff--illegally, as Fox

contended--granted the request. But further still, the High

Bailiff, Mr. Corbett, who was no friend to Fox, refused to

make any legal return until this scrutiny should be decided.

Thus Westminster was left for the present destitute of

Representatives, and Fox would have been without a seat in the

new Parliament but for the friendship of Sir Thomas Dundas,

through which he had been already returned the member for the

close boroughs of Kirkwall.”

 

Gallant Whig poetasters were rapturous in their praises of the fair

canvassers who were making such havoc in the Tory ranks.

 

[Illustration: THE WIT’S LAST STAKE; OR, THE COBBLING VOTER AND ABJECT

CANVASSERS. BY T. ROWLANDSON.

 

“Dear Charles, whose eloquence I prize,

To whom my every vote is due,

What shall we now, alas! devise

To cheer our faint desponding crew?

 

“Well have we fought the hard campaign,

And battled it with all our force:

But self-esteem alone we gain,

Outrun and jockey’d in the course.”

 

[_Page 275._]

 

 

“THE DUCHESS ACQUITTED; OR, THE TRUE CAUSE OF THE MAJORITY ON THE

WESTMINSTER ELECTION.

 

“Some strive to wound the virtuous name

Of Devonshire’s, Duncannon’s fame,

That beauteous peerless pair;

And all the toiling earnest throng,

Let’s celebrate in tuneful song,

The brunette and the fair.

When charms conspire, and join their aid,

What mortal man is not afraid,

Who can unmov’d remain?

What heart is safe, whose vote secure,

When urg’d by the resistless pow’r

Of Venus and her train?

Let Slander, with her haggard eye,

No more blaspheme with hideous cry,

Th’ indefatigable dame.

’Twas Venus in disguise, ’tis said,

These efforts thro’ the town display’d,

And her’s alone the blame.

Than beauty’s force and mighty pow’r,

Than charms exerted ev’ry hour,

What greater cause of fear?

Firm resolution melts away,

At beauty’s so superior sway,

And Falsehood seems as fair.

The heart that still retain’d Love’s fire,

Unchill’d by age, warm with desire,

Could not resist their sway;

’Twas this rais’d Fox’s numbers higher,

This did the tardy votes inspire--

Ah! poor Sir Cecil Wray!”

 

The Tories in their annoyance resorted to libels of the most ungallant

and ungenerous order; they accused the duchess of wholesale bribery,

and reported that she had in one instance bought the vote of a butcher

with a kiss, a rumour which was immediately seized by the whimsical

wits for the basis of endless exaggerations. “The Devonshire, or Most

Approved Method of Securing Votes” embodies the butcher episode. The

practice of claiming some slight service, rewarded at election times

with extravagant liberality, as a subterfuge for bribery, is shown

in the duchess engaging an elector to put a stitch in her shoe, and

illustrated as “The Wit’s Last Stake; or, the Cobbling Voter and Abject

Canvassers.”

 

Besides “The Devonshire, or Most Approved Method of Securing Votes,”

two caricatures appeared on the 12th of April from Rowlandson’s

prolific graver: one, exhibiting the struggle between the fair

canvassers arrayed in rivalry at Covent Garden hustings, under the

symbol of “The Poll:” a balancing plank, whereon the beauteous

Georgiana “Devon’s Queen,” is elevated high in the air, while her

stouter rival, the Hon. Mrs. Hobart (Lady Buckinghamshire), is

overweighing her extremely. Above the heads of the group, which

includes the rival candidates, Fox, Hood, and Wray, flutters a placard,

“The Rival Candidates, a Farce.” Against Wray was revived, in allusion

to the Court patronage under which he was fighting, the well-worn cry

of “Slavery and wooden shoes,” and much stress was laid on the extreme

measure of polling the Guards as householders; in reference to the two

hundred and eighty votes given by soldiers at one time in a body--an

astounding manœuvre, which shocked constitutional minds--appeared the placard: