A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering in the Old Days / Showing the State of Political Parties and Party Warfare at the Hustings and in the House of Commons from the Stuarts to Queen Victoria
The Project Gutenberg eBook, A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering in the Old Days, by Joseph Grego
“THE RIGHTS of WOMEN” or the EFFECTS of FEMALE ENFRANCHISEMENT
“I think the Tories love to buy ‘Your Lordships’ and ‘Your Graces,’ By loathing common honesty, And lauding commonplaces.... I think the Whigs are wicked Knaves (And very like the Tories) Who doubt that Britain rules the waves, And ask the price of glories .”
W. M. Praed (1826).
“A friend to freedom and freeholders—yet No less a friend to government—he held That he exactly the just medium hit ’Twixt place and patriotism; albeit compell’d, Such was his sovereign’s pleasure (though unfit, He added modestly, when rebels rail’d), To hold some sinecures he wish’d abolish’d, But that with them all law would be demolish’d.”
Lord Byron.
Apart from political parties, we are all concerned in that important national birthright, the due representation of the people. It will be conceded that the most important element of Parliaments—specially chosen to embody the collective wisdom of the nation—is the legitimate method of their constitution. Given the unrestricted rights of election, a representative House of Commons is the happy result; the opposite follows a tampering with the franchise, and debauched constituencies. The effects of bribery, intimidation, undue influence, coercion on the part of the Crown or its responsible advisers, an extensive system of personal patronage, boroughmongering, close or pocket boroughs, and all those contraband devices of old to hamper the popular choice of representatives, have inevitably produced a legislature more or less corrupt, as history has registered. Bad as were the workings of the electoral system anterior to the advent of parliamentary reform, it speaks volumes for the manly nature of British electors and their representatives that Parliaments thus basely constituted were, on the whole, fairly honest, nor unmindful altogether of those liberties of the subject they were by supposition elected to maintain; and when symptoms of corruption in the Commons became patent, the degeneracy was not long countenanced, the national spirit being sufficiently vigorous to crush the threatened evils, and bring about a healthier state of things.
Joseph Grego
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PREFACE.
CONTENTS.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
“A NOTE OF MY BATHE BUSINESS ABOUT THE PARLIAMENT.
“THE EARLE OF SALSBURY’S LETTER.
“A GENERAL SALE OF REBELLIOUS HOUSEHOLD STUFF.
“HIS MAJESTY’S MOST GRACIOUS SPEECH TO BOTH HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.
“THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE TO BE LET.
“A LITANY FROM GENEVA,
“THE STATESMAN’S ALMANACK.
EPILOGUE.
“PLAIN DEALING,
“A SPEECH WITHOUT DOORS MADE BY A PLEBEIAN TO HIS NOBLE FRIENDS.
“THE PARLIAMENT DISSOLVED AT OXFORD.
“ON PARLIAMENT REMOVING FROM LONDON TO OXFORD.
“THE WHIGS’ DOWNFALL.
“TO MR. E. L. ON HIS MAJESTY’S DISSOLVING THE LATE PARLIAMENT AT OXFORD.
“THE WHIGS’ ADDRESS TO HIS MAJESTY.
“THE PATRIOTS. 1700.
“THE UNIVERSITY BALLAD; OR THE CHURCH’S ADVICE TO HER TWO DAUGHTERS, OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE.
“THE OLD TACK AND THE NEW.
“A FULL AND AMPLE EXPLANATION OF ONE KING JAMES’S DECLARATION.
“THE RIGHT AND TRUE HISTORY OF PERKIN.
“THE LORDS’ LAMENTATION; OR, THE WHITTINGTON DEFEAT.
“PEG TRIM TRAM IN THE SUDS; OR, NO FRENCH STROLLERS.
“TO THE WORTHY ELECTORS OF WESTMINSTER.
“THE PARLIAMENTARY RACE; OR, THE CITY JOCKIES.
“LONDON.
“OXFORD.
“TO THE GENTLEMEN, CLERGY, AND FREEHOLDERS OF THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX.
“TO THE REV. JOHN HORNE, MINISTER OF BRENTFORD.
“THE GOTHAM ADDRESSERS; OR, A PEEP AT THE HEARSE.”
“A NEW SONG; BEING A POETICAL PETITION TO THE KING.
“SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN’S ADDRESS TO THE WORTHY ELECTORS OF THE ANCIENT BOROUGH OF GARRATT,
“TO THE NOBILITY, GENTRY, CLERGY, AND FREEMEN OF THE ANCIENT CORPORATIVE TOWN OF GARRATT.
R. B. SHERIDAN, ESQ., EXPENSES AT THE BOROUGH OF STAFFORD, FOR ELECTION, ANNO 1784.
“THE DUCHESS ACQUITTED; OR, THE TRUE CAUSE OF THE MAJORITY ON THE WESTMINSTER ELECTION.
“A CONCISE DESCRIPTION OF COVENT GARDEN AT THE PRESENT WESTMINSTER ELECTION.
“STANZAS IN SEASON.
“ON SEEING LADY BEAUCHAMP, LADY CARLISLE, AND LADY DERBY IN THEIR CARRIAGES, ON MR. FOX’S SIDE OF THE HUSTINGS.
The Duchess of Devonshire was idolized by enthusiastic Whigs, who hailed in her the salvation of the cause:—
“ON SEEING THE DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE, LADY DUNCANNON, ETC., CANVASSING FOR MR. FOX.
“ON A CERTAIN DUCHESS.
“EPIGRAM ON THE DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE.
“IMPROMPTU ON HER GRACE OF DEVONSHIRE.
“ODE TO THE DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE.
“THE PARADOX OF THE TIMES.
“A NEW SONG, TO THE TUNE OF ‘LET THE TOAST PASS.’
“FRIEND OF HUMANITY.
“KNIFE-GRINDER.
“FRIEND OF HUMANITY.
“THE NEW CHEVY CHASE.
“SPEECH OF SIR FRANCIS BURDETT ON HIS FINAL RETURN FOR WESTMINSTER, 1837.
“ELECTION DAY-A SKETCH FROM NATURE.
“THE ELECTION.
SUMMARY OF BRIBERY AT ELECTIONS.—BRIBERY ACTS.
THREE-VOLUME NOVELS IN THE PRESS.
THE PICCADILLY NOVELS.
CHEAP EDITIONS OF POPULAR NOVELS.
FOOTNOTES:
Transcriber’s Note:
