The candidate they selected was a local man—Mr. Thos. Hawkes, of Himley. Mr. Hawkes was an amiable man, whose family had made their property in Dudley, and who had himself been engaged in the glass trade of the district. He was a man of some ambition, and had aimed for a long time at high society and a seat in parliament, without having either the means sufficient for the one, or the ability desirable for the other. However, the Dudley Tories were disposed to gratify him, the more so as he was a man very likely to succeed at an election from his general popularity, and the more so from his residence being next door to Himley Hall.
Mr. Hawkes was accordingly proposed. The Tories exerted themselves indefatigably on his behalf, and it was speedily evident that they would be successful. But the Tories of Dudley are not a class of people who can bear either success or defeat with moderation. They had displayed from an early period of this contest violent passions, and an infinite amount of bad feeling towards their opponents of all classes. Gangs of bullies had gone about to threaten and assault individuals, canvassers upon the Liberal side had been insulted in the public streets, and it was an open boast with the Tories that they would make the town too hot for their adversaries. On the day of election all those coarse and vulgar methods of exasperation were increased tenfold. People were insulted at the poll, and the authorities, all Tories, would afford them no protection. At length the town became a scene of riot and confusion. It was feared that Sir John Campbell would personally become an object of attack, and he was advised to leave the town. Accordingly whilst the Tory mob was bellowing in the street, in the front of his hotel, the Attorney General, accompanied by a friend, and disguised by a muffler round the lower part of his face, left the inn by a back door, and proceeding through the narrowest and dirtiest parts of the town, escaped from it by a circuitous route. The passage by which Sir John left Dudley received the name of “Campbell’s flight,” and will probably be so distinguished long after the circumstances which gave it celebrity have passed into oblivion.
An hour of retribution, however, was now at hand. The Tory mob had held the town all day, but it is a dangerous thing in a district of this sort to play a game at mobs. No sooner was it known that there was rioting in Dudley than the largest coal and ironworks on the Stourbridge side poured forth an army of miners; men to whom to see the light of day was itself almost an excitement. Into Dudley they poured with wild shouts and outcries. The people fled in terror. The shop windows had all been closed. As they came down the streets the colliers pulled down every shutter, and threw them through the windows into the houses. Not a whole pane of glass was left. The pavements were torn up. Stones began to fly in all directions. The town for a whole hour was given up to a worse riot than before, and then the Blacks began to retire.
The rear of their army was at one end of the town when the Dragoons from Birmingham galloped in at the other. The authorities who had permitted riots on their own side all the day, had sent expresses for the troops the moment they found they had got the worst of the game they had begun. The military arrived too late to prevent the mischief; but they held possession of the town all night, and thereby afforded security to the inhabitants. And thus terminated one of the most riotous elections ever known in England—an election thoroughly disgraceful to the town where it occurred, but of which the Dudley Tories boast to this hour, as if, instead of exciting the worst feelings of humanity, they had achieved some great moral triumph.
Mr. Hawkes sat for Dudley from February, 1834, to July 1844. At every successive election some one was brought forward to oppose him, but his majorities increased at every contest, and the Liberals polled fewer and fewer the more frequently they fought the borough. Except the excellence of their cause, they have not in fact a single element of strength in Dudley.
Mr. Hawkes probably acquired some additional influence in consequence of the marriage of one of his daughters with the brother and heir presumptive of Lord Ward. The peer himself was for a long time understood to be the lady’s suitor, but the younger brother ultimately obtained her hand. Mr. Hawkes might have continued, under these circumstances, to represent the town, but unfortunately the pressure of pecuniary embarrassments obliged him, in 1844, to go abroad, with a view to repair his fortunes. He accordingly relinquished his seat, to which Mr. John Benbow, the agent and auditor of the Ward estates, immediately succeeded.
Mr. Benbow’s pretensions to the representation of the town rest exclusively upon the office which he holds. He is neither a native nor a resident, nor in any other way connected with the place. He is comparatively very slightly known in Dudley. He visits it but rarely, and does nothing of himself to advance its local interests. A representative he can scarcely be called, for Mr. Benbow is one of those members who rarely record their opinions by a vote in Parliament, being contented with the seat without the trouble of attending.
Dudley, thus represented, has reached, as one may suppose, the lowest point of its political degradation. It fell very low when the seat descended from the Attorney-General to Mr. Hawkes. It fell still lower when the resident and the friend was superseded by the stranger and the mere official. Nothing can change Dudley but a change in the opinions of Lord Ward. And stranger things may come to pass than that.
Dudley, in outward appearance, is an improving place. Within the last five years its shops have assumed a much handsomer aspect, some of its streets have been widened and more attention has been paid to cleanliness. It has all the bustle of a busy and a thriving town; but as its trade depends exclusively upon the coal and iron districts all around it, it is necessarily subjected to many fluctuations. We cannot recommend Dudley to the tourist as a halting place, for the smoke renders the atmosphere in the town and country all around it particularly disagreeable. But there is no district in England better worth examination, both as regards the state of an important trade, and the condition of an enormous population. Those who will face the dirt and dinginess of Brierley Hill and Tipton will find ample food for study; and they will see a scene of industry and wealth where, within the memory of man, little else was to be found but open waste and common.
The concluding paragraph in this severe editorial, but too truthful recital of the political status of Dudley at this period of our history, wherein it is written that, “Nothing can change Dudley, but a change in the opinions of Lord Ward, and stranger things may come to pass than that;” has been most unexpectedly fulfilled by his Lordship’s recent recantation of his former steadfast political views, discarding now for ever the long held Conservative principles of the House of Himley, and passing over with all his enormous powers and local belongings into the ranks of the modern so-called Liberalism. Pitiable is it indeed to witness the twingings of a forced compliance now to his new-born politics in all degrees and stations of his employes; whose former by-gone stereotyped orders, wrung from many an honest heart the secret feelings of a detestation of such doings, but silenced by the sense that his daily bread absolutely depended upon his compliance. Such is the fate of Political Toadyism!