A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering 64

A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering 64

“Who,” remarked a contemporary, “in reviewing Fox’s noble

adherence to the cause of Liberty, as it affected the American

nation, and weighing the wisdom of his forewarnings of the

fatal consequences of the American War, but must admire the

prophetic spirit with which he foretold all the direful events

which resulted both to the Mother Country and her colonies from

that unnatural fratricidal war.”

 

The first Parliament after the Union with Ireland met January 22,

1801, and was marked by the reappearance of Fox and the election of

Horne Tooke for the borough of Old Sarum through the influence of Lord

Camelford. The return of one who had been in holy orders involved a

great constitutional question; his admission was opposed on the ground

of his clerical profession, and it led to a bill making clergymen

incapable of sitting in parliament. Tooke occupied his seat until the

next dissolution, which occurred the year following, when he was no

longer eligible. The circumstances are commemorated in a caricature

by Gillray, entitled, “Political Amusements for Young Gentlemen, or

the Brentford Shuttlecock between Old Sarum and the Temple of St.

Stephen’s,” March, 1801. Lord Temple led the opposition to Tooke’s

admission, and he is represented as resisting his entrance to the

House, within which Fox is pictured crying, “The Church for Ever!” Lord

Camelford, who was in the navy, is batting the shuttlecock from Old

Sarum (the electors depicted as swine at a trough) to the Commons; he

cries, “There’s a stroke for you, messmate; and if you kick him back,

I’ll return him again, if I should be sent on a cruise to Moorfields

for it! Go it, Coz.” Lord Temple is replying, “Send him back? Yes, I’ll

send him back twenty thousand times, before such a high-flying Jacobin

shuttlecock shall perch it here in his Clerical band.” Lord Camelford’s

“List of Candidates” includes, besides Tooke, the names of Black Dick

(his negro servant), and orator Thelwall, in case his ex-clerical

nominee’s election was annulled; but his lordship disclaimed ever

having entertained the intention of offering so gross an insult to the

House. The inscriptions on the feathers stuck in the head of the noble

lord’s plaything, “The Old Brentford Shuttlecock,” are intended to

indicate his character.

 

[Illustration: Lord Temple.

 

J. Horne Tooke.

 

Lord Camelford.

 

POLITICAL AMUSEMENTS FOR YOUNG GENTLEMEN, OR THE BRENTFORD SHUTTLECOCK

BETWEEN OLD SARUM AND THE TEMPLE OF ST. STEPHEN’S. 1801. BY J. GILLRAY.]

 

[Illustration:

 

THE OLD BRENTFORD SHUTTLECOCK--JOHN HORNE TOOKE RETURNED FOR

OLD SARUM. 1801. #/ ]

 

Though the cause of Sir Francis Delaval suffered at Andover from a

_contretemps_ in which the commanding officer of the district was

concerned, by an opposite course of events the return of Mr. N.

Jefferys for Coventry was assured through military intervention.

When writs were issued for a new parliament in 1802, a meeting was

convened at Coventry, when it was resolved to invite Mr. Jefferys

again to become a candidate to represent them, and to support his

re-election. Upon Mr. Jefferys accepting this invitation, and

proceeding down to Coventry to meet his constituents, his entrance

into the city was unhandsomely opposed, a riot ensued, and things

began to look dangerous, when Captain Barlow of the First Dragoon

Guards, who happened to be there, his regiment being stationed in the

neighbourhood, exerted himself with much spirit to quell the riot and

protect the candidate and his friends from insult. Rarely has a casual

and unexpected service been more singularly acknowledged; Captain

Barlow was at once invited to join Mr. Jefferys as second Conservative

candidate, which he readily accepted; the show of hands at the hustings

was in his favour, and both were triumphantly returned. The contest was

a close one; Captain Barlow stood at the head of the poll with 1197

votes, N. Jefferys was elected with 1190; and the two Whig candidates

were defeated--Wilberforce Bird with 1182, and Peter Moore with 1152

votes.

 

The Middlesex election of 1804 vividly recalled the previous excitement

manifested at the Brentford hustings on the return of John Wilkes;

the new party of “root-and-branch reformers,” more extreme in their

political views than the Foxites, were now becoming most conspicuous

by their agitations for the revision of the Constitution, and began

to be known under the designation of Radicals. At the head of these

“patriots” in the House of Commons were several of the younger

politicians and “new luminaries,” such as Whitbread, Lord Folkestone,

and others; but the most prominent leader of the movement was Sir

Francis Burdett, then occupying the position previously held by “Wilkes

and Liberty” at the commencement of the reign, and by Fox before his

secession from Parliament. Horne Tooke, who passed out-of-doors as

the baronet’s political sponsor, “guide, philosopher, and friend,”

was actively supporting his pupil, and William Cobbett was, by his

energetic writings, proselytizing in the same cause, and was generally

regarded as the apostle of the latest sect. In the same ranks were

included the wealthy Bosville and other zealous partisans. At the

Middlesex election of 1802, Sir Francis Burdett, in the Radical

interest, had unseated the Tory candidate, W. Mainwaring, polling

nearly double the votes obtained by the ministerial candidate, who had

represented the county from 1784.

 

In 1804, the election for Middlesex was equally trying for the

administration as the memorable struggle at Westminster in 1784, and

recalled the scenes witnessed on the same spot in 1786. Gillray has

commemorated this occurrence in one of his most elaborate caricatures,

published August 7, 1804:--“Middlesex Election, 1804--a Long Pull, a

Strong Pull, and a Pull All Together;” the hustings at Brentford appear

in the distance, whereon the ministerial candidate is holding forth

to an exuberant crowd, amidst which derisive symbols are displayed--a

huge begging-box, a gallows with an effigy suspended, and a banner

inscribed, “No Begging Candidate.” The head-quarters of the Court

party, at the sign of the Constitution (a crown and mitre) placarded

with posters, “Mainwaring, King, and Country,” and advertising “good

entertainment,” is treated to a perfect shower of missiles and dirt; a

free fight is proceeding at a distance. Beneath the standard claiming

“Independence and Free Elections,” now a reasonable aspiration, but,

in those days, regarded as little short of sedition, a rat is hung to

a lantern, expressive of contempt for “ministerial rats.” Sir Francis

Burdett is carried triumphantly to the hustings; his barouche, drawn by

the most illustrious members of the opposition, is emblazoned on the

panels with suggestive devices: “Peace” is figured as a French eagle,

with the legend, “_Égalité_;” the Torch of Liberty is a flaming and

incendiary brand; and “Plenty” is symbolized by a pot of porter with

the head of Bonaparte on the measure. Beneath the wheels of Burdett’s

chariot is figured a dog with “A Cur-tis” on his collar, a blow at

Sir William Curtis, enriched by “fat” Government contracts; by him is

Tooke’s tract, “A Squeeze for Contractors.” On the box is the baronet’s

reputed preceptor, the Brentford Parson himself, “in his habit as he

lived,” smoking his pipe like his confederate “Bellenden,” that

“revolution sinner” Dr. Parr; from the prime agitator’s pockets fall

the speeches, “hints,” and addresses it is implied he had prepared for

his hopeful pupil.

 

[Illustration: MIDDLESEX ELECTION, 1804. A LONG PULL--A STRONG

PULL--AND A PULL ALL TOGETHER. BY JAMES GILLRAY.

 

[_Page 312._]

 

“The Party” is doing its utmost to forward Burdett’s career, and to

mortify the Ministry. Tyrwhitt Jones and General Fitzpatrick, eccentric

and independent politicians, are leading the “marrow-bone and cleaver”

music; two lines of influential Whig statesmen are propelling the car;

Bosville, Grey, the Duke of Northumberland, the Marquis of Lansdowne,

and the Duke of Norfolk in one file, and Lord Carlisle, the Duke of

Bedford, Lord Derby, and Fox in the other, all travestied felicitously

under disguises which the caricaturist has suggested as appropriate

to their characters or situations. Lord Moira (Marquis of Hastings),

with the prince’s plume on his instrument, is acting as drummer.

Behind the carriage rides Erskine in his bar robes, with the cap of

liberty on a pike, marked “The Good Old Cause.” Tierney has “The Key

of the Bastille,” in allusion to Burdett’s exertions on behalf of the

political prisoners with which the prisons, such as Coldbath Fields,

were at that time filled; while Sheridan is raising aloft the pictorial

version of the “Governor in All His Glory,” _i.e._ Pitt flogging

Britannia, who is fixed in the pillory, of which an enlarged version

appears.

 

[Illustration: BRITANNIA FLOGGED BY PITT--THE GOVERNOR IN ALL HIS

GLORY. 1804.]

 

The election contests in 1806 and 1807, which ensued on the death of

Fox, fully occupied the pencil of Gillray: his elaborate cartoons, of

which reduced _fac-similes_ are given, prove that election squibs must

in his day have enjoyed a large circulation; the artist seems to have

developed them into elaborate conceptions. Westminster was again the

constituency, where the struggle was regarded as of most absorbing

interest. Sheridan, who had sat for Stafford from 1780, now flattered

himself that his popularity and his intimacy with Fox would, on the

decease of the Whig chief, point him out as the natural successor of

the illustrious statesman. He found an embarrassing opponent in James

Paull (the son of a prosperous tailor), who had returned from India,

where he filled an appointment, and brought home with him a moderate

fortune and liberal ideas as regarded administrative reform. His

candidature for Westminster was supported by the influence of all the

advanced politicians, the ultra-Liberals, and the Radical Reformers.

 

In the first of Gillray’s satires on this topic, the “Triumphal

Procession of Little Paull, the Tailor, upon his new Goose,” November

8, 1806, Sir Francis Burdett, who was for some time travestied as “The

Famous Green Goose,” is lending Little Paull a helping mount; Tooke

is leading his pupil; Colonel Bosville is distributing money to make

the candidate popular; Cobbett, with “Political Register” in hand, is

canvassing for Paull and “Independence and Public Justice”--referring

to the new patriot’s articles of impeachment against the Marquis of

Wellesley on his return from India. In view of the energetic tactics of

the new candidate and his allies, Sir Samuel Hood and Sheridan thought

it advisable to combine their interests, and make a coalition for the

occasion. The situation is pictorially summed up as “The High-flying

Candidate, Little Paull Goose, mounting from a Blanket--_Vide_ Humours