In proud disdain,
Then break again,
Each Tory link asunder.
The old town of Dudley, with the outlying hamlets of Netherton and Woodside, having been created into one of the New Reform Parliamentary Boroughs (allotted to send one Member to Parliament), the whole town became awakened to its newly endowed responsibilities, and many an ardent admirer of his native town rejoiced in the fact that Dudley had been restored to its ancient Parliamentary honours and privileges, which had been taken from it, viz.: disfranchised by Oliver Cromwell’s Parliament for its fidelity to the Royal Stuarts. As a matter of course, Dudley proclaimed for Reform, and there was no gainsaying the opinion that the new Reform Bill had made Dudley into a real borough; therefore, we must have a Reformer to sit for Dudley. The old Tory party thought different, and considered that the world was going wrong, that revolution and the destruction of Church and State was near at hand, despite the exuberance and hilarity of the Reformers; and they succeeded in inducing Mr. Abiathar Hawkes, a local Glass Manufacturer, to issue his moderate Reform Address, conveying the impression that the man was to be elected for some virtue in himself, not for his pronounced political opinions.
However, Mr. A. Hawkes soon retired from the attitude that he and his too zealous friends had strung him up to, for he retired before the first election came on in 1832, and his place was supplied by the well-known Tory, Sir Horace St. Paul, Bart. The Reformers in the new borough were far from falling asleep, and after one or two futile efforts to procure a local candidate, they succeeded in inducing plain Mr. John Campbell, Q.C., from Edinburgh, to fight the first battle of Reform in the maiden borough of Dudley. Sharp and fierce was the contest, but as the majority of the 800 electors were somewhat raw and green at electioneering adventures and tactics, they did not come up to the style and vigour of electioneering “pleasure and relaxation” which was witnessed at our hustings and in our streets in later years. The close of the poll shewed Mr. John Campbell the winner.
1st. ELECTION, 1832.
| 1. Mr. John Campbell, Reformer | 318 |
| 2. Sir Horace St. Paul, Bart., Tory | 229 |
| —— | |
| Majority for Campbell | 89 |
Thus the Reformers of Dudley distinguished themselves at their first effort at electioneering, and happened to secure the election to St. Stephen’s Hall of one of the soundest lawyers of his day, besides becoming one of the most accomplished Historians of his country, for Lord Campbell’s “Lives of the Lord Chancellors of England,” can never die in historical readings.
DUDLEY ELECTION.
THE SPEECHES of SIR H. D. C. ST. PAUL; SIR JOHN CAMPBELL, and others;