A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering 21

A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering 21

This conversation convinced the witness that his friend’s chances were

hopeless in opposing a great Peer who could display such an intimate

knowledge of the electors and their families. To the said marquis

does Dr. Percy attribute the famous Irish ballad of “Lillibulero,”

which is said to have had effects more powerful than the philippics of

Demosthenes or the orations of Cicero, and certainly contributed not a

little towards the revolution in 1688.

 

In the days of Queen Anne, the arrival of a popular candidate of the

High Tory type was welcomed in a stately manner by the supporters of

the “Church” cause, as appears from “Dyer’s Letters.”

 

“May 5th.--From Exon, we have an account of the honourable

reception there of John Snell, Esq., one of the representatives

in the late parliament, an honest, loyal, and brave _Tacker_,

who arrived from London on the 1st inst., having been met

some miles out of town by above 500 horse and some 1000 foot,

composed of the neighbouring gentry, with the clergy, aldermen,

and principal citizens; who conducted him to his own house with

the city music playing before him, the streets echoing with

these acclamations--‘GOD BLESS THE LOYAL TACKERS, AND SEND

THE SNEAKERS MORE HONESTY AND COURAGE.’”

 

According to the Tories, all who were opposed to the “Tackers” of their

order must be stigmatized to the public as “Sneakers.”

 

The Whigs were equally unscrupulous in the audacity of their

assertions; the fatally damaging effect of a startling calumny, no

matter how improbable, so that it be bold enough, exploded on an

opponent by way of surprise--a resource much relied upon when matters

looked desperate at these times of unsparing warfare--is illustrated in

the next extract:--

 

“May 15th.--The Lord Woodstock, son of the Earl of Portland,

has carried it at Southampton against Fred Tilney, Esq., a

loyal and worthy gentleman, which was done by this trick:--that

gentleman happening to pay his reckoning in that town with

about 70 Loudores, which he had received there, _the Whig party

immediately gave out he was a French pensioner, which calumny

answered their purpose_.”

 

“May 29th.--Since my last, we have had an account of several

elections, which I leave to the Gazette to enumerate: only the

management of some of them is worth notice, particularly for

the county of Worcester, where Sir John Packington and Mr.

Bromley carried it gloriously against Mr. Walsh, who was set

up by the Dissenters. Sir John Packington had a banner carried

before him, whereon was painted _a church falling,_ with

this inscription--‘_For the Queen and Church, Packington._’

It was observable, that while they were marching through the

Foregate-Street, they met the Bishop’s coach, in which was a

_Non-Con. teacher_, going to poll for Capt. Walsh, but the

horses (at the sight of the church, as ’twas believed) turned

tail, overturned and broke the same, and very much bruised

the _Holder-Forth’s_ outward man; and this raised no small

admiration that the Bishop’s horses should be afraid of a

church.”

 

The commotion which in the days of Queen Anne was manifested in the

public thoroughfares at an electioneering epoch is incidentally

pictured by Dean Swift, in his “Journal to Stella:”--

 

“Oct. 5, 1710.--This morning Delaval came to see me, and went

to Kneller’s, who was in town. On the way we met the electors

for parliament-men, and the rabble came about our coach,

crying, ‘A Colt! A Stanhope! etc.’ _We were afraid of a dead

cat, or our glasses broken, and so were always of their side._”

 

Among the lost illustrations of the humours of elections is the ballad,

“full of puns,” which Swift mentions having produced on that said

Westminster election; for any trace of which we have vainly searched

among the political pamphlets and poetical broadsides of the Queen Anne

era.

 

It is Swift who relates the untoward catastrophe which awaited his

friend, Richard Steele, the improvident “Tatler,” who, having a design

to serve in the last parliament of Queen Anne, resigned his place of

Commissioner of the Stamp Office in June, 1713, and was chosen for the

borough of Stockbridge, in Hampshire, one of the snug constituencies

swept away by the Reform Bill a century or so later. The Dean writes of

Dick’s adventures on this errand:--

 

“There was nothing there to perplex him but the payment of a

£300 bond, which lessened the sum he carried down, and which

an odd dog of a creditor had intimation of and took this

opportunity to recover.”

 

Steele’s parliamentary career was brief. He had not been long in the

House before he contrived to get expelled, and gave deadly offence

to the queen, by writing “The Englishman” and “The Crisis” against

the Jacobite Tories. With the advent of his “Protestant hero,” George

I., Steele secured patronage, knighthood, and a seat in the first

parliament, where he sat for the since-notorious Boroughbridge,

Yorkshire.

 

A deeply designed stroke of electioneering policy is credited to Sarah,

Duchess of Marlborough, who excelled in the subtle tactics invaluable

in these emergencies, which raised her to the level of Wharton in

election fame, while promoting the success of her nominees. Lord

Grimston happened to oppose her grace’s candidates. Now, Lord Grimston,

as is related by Johnson, had written a heavy play, “Love in a Hollow

Tree,” having become ashamed of which bantling, he did his best to

suppress it:--

 

“The leaden crown devolved on thee,

Great poet of the hollow tree.”

 

“But the Duchess of Marlborough had kept one, and when he

was against her at an election, she had a new edition of it

printed, and prefixed to it, as a frontispiece, an elephant

dancing on a rope; to show that his Lordship’s writing comedy

was as awkward as an elephant dancing on a rope.”[37]

 

It was so much a matter of course that everything in a man’s life

should tell against him, if he had the temerity to stand for

parliament, that Johnson, when interrogated by Boswell, “whether

a certain act of folly would injure a friend of theirs for life?”

replied, “It may perhaps, sir, be mentioned at an election,”--the

duchess’s feat probably presenting itself to Johnson’s mind at the time.

 

Hannay, in his sparkling essay on “Electioneering,” also relates the

following:--“Mamma,” said a young candidate to his parent in deep

confidence, one nomination day, “tell me truly, is there anything

against my birth?”--an ingenious precaution in view of eventualities

which the youth not imprudently employed to prepare himself for the

worst, and that he might not he taken by surprise at the hustings.

 

The Tories were forced, after their failure to proclaim the Pretender

as successor to Queen Anne, to subscribe their loyalty on the accession

of George I. This they did with a reservation, as hinted by their

opponents, who now held the good things of the administration:--

 

“Your fathers, like men, who had thoughts of a Heaven,

Took the Oaths in the Sense in which they were given;

But you, like your Brethren the Jesuits, can find

A way to evade all the ties of mankind,

So that nothing but Halters your faction can bind.”

 

It was not without reasonable suspicions of the Jacobite party that the

ministers of George I. deemed it prudent to keep the Commons they had,

rather than face a fresh election, since a general mistrust was abroad.

From an effusion upon the bell-ringing in 1716, on the anniversary of

Queen Anne’s coronation, it appears this tribute of respect to the

memory of the late sovereign was regarded as a Tory manifesto:--

 

“’Tis Nancy’s Coronation Day

By whom ye hop’d to bring in play

Young George, the Chevalier.

But Fate, who best disposes things,

And pulls down Queens and sets up Kings,

A better George sent here.”

 

According to the lyrist, the papists were tired of praying for

Walpole’s abrupt end; but the conclusion exhibits the feeling then

prevailing--and which was justified by after-events,--that the

prolonged sessions of parliament under the new Septennial Act offered

some defence against the schemes of their opponents; in fact, the

tables were turned, and the Whigs of this parliament dreaded the

machinations of the Tories, much as the Abhorrers and courtiers

detested and feared the Whigs under Charles II.

 

“But now they utter loud complaints,

And curse all male and female saints,

Walpole still lives, their curb;

And four long years, at least, must come,

Ere French pistoles, and friends to Rome,

Our Liberties disturb.”

 

The Pretender, whose cause looked hopeful at the time of his “dear

sister’s” decease, was treated by the Whig satirists with all the

ridicule their pens could command:--

 

 

“A FULL AND AMPLE EXPLANATION OF ONE KING JAMES’S DECLARATION.

 

“Had my dear Sister still been living,

I might have hop’d for (the Crown) of her giving;

But she, alas, is gone, and all