Small Talk at Wreyland. Second Series

by Cecil Torr

These men cared more for Church than State, and thought the end might justify the means; but I have known seats lost without excuse. A breezy sailor was looking for a seat in 1885, and tried a London constituency in which I had a vote. He was a very strong candidate; but the local Conservative Association would not adopt him unless he paid them £400 a year. I cannot say (verbatim) where he told them all to go to; but he went elsewhere himself and was elected. They got their £400 a year from a nincompoop who lost the seat.

I remember a City man who was Vice-Chairman of one of the biggest undertakings there, but found he had no chance of being Chairman unless he was in Parliament—they wanted someone who could put their views before the House. He was a first-rate businessman, but not a showy speaker; so he got a brilliant young barrister to join him in contesting a borough with two seats. He paid the second candidate’s expenses, only “it must be understood that in his canvassing for himself, he of course supports me as senior Liberal candidate.” I remember that young barrister then—and also as a Judge long afterwards—and he was much too big a man to be subordinate to anyone. He made such brilliant speeches there that the senior Liberal candidate was totally eclipsed.

But his speeches did not really make much difference. A man writes to my father, 7 July 1864, “I was twice solicited to contest this most rotten borough, and will undertake to say that, whatever ***** may do, the best bidder will gain the day. I never was so disgusted with any place. They stipulate for 2 or 3000l and leave you to be prepared to double this sum or more. Depend upon it, nothing but money will do, and with a free use of that, all is safe.”

Two incidents in that election are imprinted on my mind.—The senior Liberal candidate was past the prime of life, but very tall and dignified, with a charming face and silvery hair, which really was a wig. Not having stood for Parliament before, he got a little flurried on the hustings; and, meaning to wave his hat, he waved his wig as well.—A voter happened to be coachman to a strong supporter of the other side, who was at his London house just then. The coachman said it was “as much as his place was worth” to ask his employer for leave to go down to record his vote. And, with very little scratching of his head, that man was able to reckon up, within a pound or two, how much his place was worth.

Barefaced bribery is not a bad thing, in its way. The voter got hard cash, and the candidate provided it; whereas the voter only gets wild promises now, and these always cost the country a good deal, even if they do no good to anybody. Moreover, when the voter could be bought, there was not the same necessity for cramming him with lies. With his pocket full of money and no illusions in his mind, he went gaily to the poll, feeling that it was all a festival at which he was an honoured guest. And in very many places it was very little else.

An old friend of the family writes to my mother from Brighton, 6 July 1841, “I was at Shoreham on Saturday. During the heat of the polling the scene was more amusing and lively than what you saw here. Lord Howard (who by the bye had on a shocking raffish dirty white hat) had between thirty to forty men and boys drest in white with pink bands round their bodies with ‘Howard for ever’ on them, shoulders and legs and hats also decorated with pink ribbons, and each with a wand with flag attached. There were also eight with huge flags, and two bands of music similarly drest. They altogether formed a very pretty tableau. Their province was to meet the voters coming up at the bridge, then form in procession and escort them to the polling booths. Sir Charles Burrell’s were in white with orange decorations: Goring’s white with red and ethereal blue. They of course had music, and neither party was idle: so what with four bands of music, a multitude of flags, vociferous cheers, horrid yells and groans, and now and then a shindy, it made as spirited and lively a contest as one would wish to see.”

Writing from Reigate on Sunday 13 May 1849, my father says, “I walked over to Bletchingley, a rotten borough and much gone to decay, and there I went to church. With the exception of about twenty well-dressed people, the congregation was composed of hard-featured rough farmers with lots of young girls and urchins belonging apparently to the parish school: the choir was a fiddle, bass-viol and clarionet; and every body and thing looking as uncouth as in the most remote districts.” Bletchingley was one of the rotten boroughs that were disfranchised by the Reform Bill of 1832. Till then it had two members. Shoreham had two members until 1885.

He came up to London from Carshalton on the morning of 10 April 1848 and “met Chartists all round Kennington.” Among my family relics I have a truncheon: there were 150,000 special constables then, and they stopped any Chartism. But the Charter itself seems harmless now: we have accepted five of its six points, and might very well accept the other one—annual parliaments. If we had general elections every year, they would soon cease to be such great events, and such great nuisances; and there might be greater continuity in our public policy. A moderate loss of seats would warn the Ministers, if they were taking a wrong course; and then they probably would alter course at once, instead of keeping on for several years, and then losing so many seats that they are superseded and their policy reversed.

We badly need a word (say Pleistarchy) for government by majority. We call it Democracy, but use that word in quite another sense. The arguments for democracy are embodied in stock phrases, ‘the will of the people,’ ‘vox populi,’ and so on, all implying that the people or populus or dêmos is always going to be unanimous, just like a jury. It may be necessary that the will of fifty-one should thwart the will of forty-nine; but it cannot be justified by saying that the will of the people must prevail, as that means the will of the whole hundred, if it means anything at all. We should come nearer to democracy by stipulating for majorities of two-thirds or three-fourths, as in America; but we ought to have majorities of nine-tenths or nineteen-twentieths before we talk about democracy here. And we might talk less nonsense, if we had a word like Pleistarchy expressing what we really mean.

Corruption was not confined to politics. A friend of my father’s writes to him from Torquay, 29 January 1845, about a younger brother who was causing him anxiety. “You perhaps are aware that I have endeavoured to obtain him a cadetship in the East India Company’s service.... I have been thinking that his best course is to purchase the appointment I have mentioned. These things are to be done, and are daily done, and it is far better for him to pay £500 or £600 than continue in his present course of life. I have strained all the efforts in my power with political friends, but in vain, and there is now but one course left—his purchasing the appointment. I am well aware that it is illegal, but there is little doubt that it can be done.”