Читать книгу A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering in the Old Days - Joseph Grego - Страница 37

Table of Contents

“The Tack34 of old, was thought as bold As any Tack could be, Sir; Nor is the Age yet void of Rage, As any man may see, Sir.

“The Tack before was Thirty-four,

Besides an even Hundred;

But now, alas! So low it was,

That people greatly wonder’d.

“If Tacks thus lose, It plainly shows,

The Spirit of the Nation;

That we may find, For Time, behind,

They’ll lose their Reputation.

“Before the Jacks35 were said to Tack Our loyal fine Pretences; But here folks say, The Humour lay To bring us to our Senses.

“Religious Laws, was then the Cause,

Occasional Conforming;

Did not agree with true Piety,

And set the Church a storming.

“But now ’tis come, they Tack in fine,

After a great Consumption;

And therefore thought to have it brought

In, by way of Resumption.

“Thus Projects, and thus Patriots chang’d,

The House appear’d so civil;

Both Tacks, which cost such Pains were lost,

And thrown out to the Devil.”

In 1695, the legislature passed a severe act against bribery and treating, the first of a series of similar preventative measures which have been found requisite from time to time down to our own day.

That this act was needed is proved by the records of the immense sums expended in corrupting the suffrage. Addison’s patron, Thomas, Marquis of Wharton, is calculated to have spent eighty thousand pounds of his own fortune in electioneering. This spirited nobleman, who was one of the most energetic Whigs, and largely instrumental in bringing over the Prince of Orange, has been regarded as the greatest adept at electioneering which England ever saw, and, says Hannay, “may pass as the patriarch of the art in this country.” It is certain that his abilities were admirably adapted to the purpose of exercising this control. It was his policy “to forward the designs of an oligarch by the attraction of a demagogue,” a branch of higher art, which has had imitators in this age. He managed to return from twenty to thirty members, at an expenditure of thousands, backed by a happy persuasive knack of carrying all before him. Nor did he stop at an occasional duel by the way. In the general election of 1705 alone, he spent twelve thousand pounds. But cash, pluck, enterprise, and activity would have been less conspicuous had they not been supplemented by what has been called a “born genius for canvassing,” as is proved from the “Memoirs” which appeared shortly after his death in 1715. Wharton’s biographer introduces the subject of an electoral contest for the borough of Wicombe, at the beginning of Anne’s reign. His Whig lordship having recommended two candidates of his own choice, the staunch Church party, in a flutter of indignation, put up two High Tory candidates, and money was freely spent on both sides. A friend of one of the High Church candidates being desirous of witnessing the progress made by this canvasser, was invited down to Wicombe to watch the proceedings, and it was he who imparted the details to the compiler of the “Memoirs.”36 The “Tantivy” party arrived to find my Lord Wharton before them, accompanied by his two protégées, going up and down the town securing votes for the Whig interest. The Tory candidates and a very few followers marched on one side of the street, Lord Wharton’s candidates and a great company on the other.

“The gentleman, not being known to my lord or the townsmen, join’d with his lordship’s men to make discoveries, and was by when my lord, entering a shoemaker’s shop, asked ‘where Dick was.’ The good woman said ‘her husband was gone two or three miles off with some shoes, but his lordship need not fear him—she would keep him tight.’ ‘I know that,’ says my lord, ‘but I want to see Dick and drink a glass with him.’ The wife was very sorry Dick was out of the way. ‘Well,’ says his lordship, ‘how does all thy children? Molly is a brave girl I warrant by this time.’ ‘Yes, I thank ye, my lord,’ says the woman: and his lordship continued—‘Is not Jemmy breeched yet?”

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:—