London Souvenirs

by Charles William Heckethorn

IV.

OLD M.P.S AND SOME OF THEIR SAYINGS.

Somebody has said that, on making inquiry after a man you have not seen for a number of years, you may find him either in the hulks or in Parliament. This somebody evidently was a bit of a philosopher, who knew how to put the possibilities of human life in a nutshell. He understood that the same cause may have totally different effects: the same heat which softens lead hardens clay, the same abilities which may send a man to penal servitude may elevate him to the dignity of an M.P. And thus it happened that some queer people got into Parliament, which, no doubt, was the fact which gave rise to somebody's wise saw, and which was not to be wondered at in the good old days, before Reform and Corrupt Practices Prevention Acts, and similar humbugging interferences with the liberty of the subject, were dreamt of. In those good old days of rotten and pocket boroughs men had Parliamentary honours thrust upon them nolentes volentes. Thus, a noble lord, who owned several such boroughs, was asked by the returning officer whom he meant to nominate. Having no eligible candidate at hand, he named a waiter at White's Club, one Robert Mackreth; but, as he did not happen to be sure of the Christian name of his nominee, the election was declared to be void. Nothing daunted, his lordship persisted in his nomination. A fresh election was therefore held, when, the name of the waiter having been ascertained, he was returned as a matter of course, and Robert Mackreth, Esq., took his seat in St. Stephen's. This was possible in the days of Eldon and Perceval; in fact, in the early part of this century, 306 members, more than half of the House of Commons, were returned by 160 persons, and in 1830 it was admitted that, though there were men of ability in the Cabinet, such as Brougham, Lansdowne, Melbourne, Palmerston, the members of the House were 'persons of very narrow capacities, of small reputation for talent, and without influence with the people.'

However, the Reform Bill was passed in 1832, and pocket boroughs were abolished. There had been thirty-seven places returning members with constituencies not exceeding fifty electors, and fourteen of those places had not more than twenty electors. There were three boroughs each containing only one £10 householder. One of the boroughs only paid in assessed taxes £3 9s., another £16 8s. 9d., a third £40 17s. 1d. But, luckily for the public, the Reform Bill did not abolish the fun of the flags, music, beer, and jokes of elections. The delicate attentions which could still be paid to candidates remained in full swing. Thus, we remember an election in the Isle of Wight: The father of one of the candidates for Parliamentary distinction, in the Conservative interest, had, in his youthful days, married a lady who, in a peripatetic manner, dealt in oysters. His rival, a Radical, paid him the compliment of sending him daily barrows and truck-loads of oyster-shells, which were, with his kind regards, discharged in front of the hotel where his committee was established, and from whose windows he addressed the electors. It was splendid fun, and calculated to impress the intelligent foreigner. It showed how highly the British public appreciated their elective franchise. Pleasantries had, indeed, always been the rule at election-time. When Fox, in 1802, canvassed Westminster, he asked a shopkeeper on the opposite side for his vote and interest, when the latter produced a halter, and said that was all he could give him. Fox thanked him, but said he could not think of depriving him of it, as no doubt it was a family relic. At an election at Norwich in 1875 the committee-room of the Conservative candidate was attacked, but the agent kept up the fire and had red-hot pokers ready, which, standing at the top of the stairs, he offered to his assailants, but they would not take them! In the same town the Liberals held a prayer-meeting, at which the Conservatives presented each man with one of Moody and Sankey's hymn-books, with something between the leaves. In fact, the Reform Bill had not made elections pure. William Roupell obtained his seat for Lambeth by the expenditure of £10,000, 'and,' said a man well able to judge of the truth of his assertion, 'if he were released from prison (to which he was sent for life for his forgeries) and would spend another £10,000, he would be re-elected, in spite of his having proved a criminal.'

Money carried the day at elections. According to a speech made by Mr. Bright at Glasgow in 1866, a member had told him that his election had cost him £9,000 already, and that he had £3,000 more to pay. At a contest in North Shropshire in 1876, the expenses of the successful candidate, Mr. Stanley Leighton, amounted to £11,727, and of the defeated candidate, Mr. Mainwaring, to £10,688. At the General Election of 1880, in the county of Middlesex, the expenses of the successful candidates, Lord George Hamilton and Mr. Octavius Coope, were £11,506. The cost of the Gravesend election, and the petition which followed and unseated the candidate returned, was estimated at £20,000. But the most expensive contest ever known in electioneering was that for the representation of Yorkshire. The candidates were Viscount Milton, son of Earl Fitzwilliam, a Whig; the Hon. Henry Lascelles, son of Lord Harewood, a Tory; and William Wilberforce, in the Dissenting and Independent interest. The election was carried on for fifteen days, Mr. Wilberforce being at the head of the poll all the time. It terminated in his favour and in that of Lord Milton. The contest is said to have cost the parties near half a million pounds. The expenses of Wilberforce were defrayed by public subscription, more than double the sum being raised within a few days, and one moiety was afterwards returned to the subscribers. When Whitbread, the brewer, first opposed the Duke of Bedford's interest at Bedford, the Duke informed him that he would spend £50,000 rather than that he should come in. Whitbread replied that was nothing, the sale of his grains would pay for that. Now, John Elwes, the miser, knew better than that. Though worth half a million of money, he entered Parliament, by the interest of Lord Craven, at the expense of 1s. 6d., for which he had a dinner at Abingdon. From 1774 he sat for the next twelve years for Berkshire, his conduct being perfectly independent, and in his case there had been no bribery that could be brought home to him. He was a great gambler, and, after staking large sums all night, he would, in the morning, go to Smithfield to await the arrival of his cattle from his farms in Essex, and, if not arrived, would walk on to meet them. He wore a wig; if he found one thrown away into the gutter, he would appropriate and wear it. In those days members occasionally wore dress-swords at the House. One day a gentleman seated next to Elwes was rising to leave his place, and just at that moment Elwes bent forward, so that the point of the sword the gentleman wore came in contact with Elwes's wig, which it whisked off and carried away. The House was instantly in a roar of laughter, whilst the gentleman, unconscious of what he had done, calmly walked away, and Elwes after him to recover his wig, which looked as if it was one of those he had picked up in the gutter.

Bribes were expected and given, as we have seen. Of course, the thing was not done openly. Tricks were practised, understood by all parties. The agent would sit in a room in an out-of-the-way place. A voter would come in; the agent would say, 'How are you to-day?' and hold up three fingers. 'I am not very well,' the answer would be, when the agent would accidentally hold up his hand, upon which the voter would say that he thought fresh air would do him good, and look out of the window as if examining the sky. In the meantime the agent would place five sovereigns on the table, and also go to look at the weather. His back being turned to the table, the voter would quietly slip the cash into his pocket, and, saying 'Good-morning,' take his departure. And how could any bribery be proved? But occasionally the people expecting bribes were nicely taken in. Lord Cochrane, when he first stood for Honiton, refused to give bribes, and the seat was secured by his opponent, who gave £5 for every vote. On this Cochrane sent the bellman round to announce that he would give to every one of the minority who had voted for him 10 guineas. At the next election no questions were asked, and Cochrane was returned by an overwhelming majority. Those who had voted for him then intimated that they expected some acknowledgment for their support. He declined to give a penny, and when he was reminded that, after the former election, he had given 10 guineas to every one of the minority, he coolly replied that this was for their disinterestedness in refusing his opponent's £5, and that to pay them now would be acting in violation of his principle not to bribe. And the disinterested voters marched off with faces as long as those of horses.

The Reform Bill of 1832, which was highly objectionable to old-fashioned Conservatives, was accused by them of having introduced some very queer and curious members into the House. Through this Bill the bone-grubber, as Raike calls him, W. Cobbett, was returned for Oldham, and Brighton, under the very nose of the Court, returned two rampant Radicals, who openly talked of reducing the allowance made to the King and Queen. Nay, John Gully, a prize-fighter, was returned to the House for Pontefract, and was re-elected at the next election. He at one time kept the Plough Inn in Carey Street, which was pulled down just before the erection of the new Law Courts. Eventually he resigned his seat on account of ill-health, as he averred; but as he became a great patron of racing, and was a constant attendant at the various race-courses, his ill-health was probably only a pretence for quitting a sphere for which he felt himself unfit. On his first election the following epigram appeared against him:

'If anyone ask why should Pontefract sully

Its name by returning to Parliament Gully,

The etymological cause, I suppose, is

He's broken the bridges of so many noses.'

Another member who may be reckoned among the curiosities who have sat in the House was William Roupell. He was the illegitimate son of Richard Palmer Roupell, a wealthy lead merchant, who invested a large sum in the purchase of land, to which he gave the name of the Roupell Park Estate. William was his favourite son, though he had other legitimate children; and it was not till a few days before his father's death that he learnt the secret of his own birth. The former had made a will, by which he left this property to William, on condition of his making annual payments to his brothers and sisters; but as this would have brought to light the forgeries he had already committed during his father's lifetime, to the amount of about £150,000, he, on his father's death, managed to get hold of the will, which eventually he destroyed, substituting a forged one, leaving all to his wife and William; and the latter quickly persuaded his mother to confer the greater part of the estates on him by deed of gift. He soon obtained the social position the great wealth he now possessed usually commands; he stood for Lambeth, and by the expenditure of £10,000, as already mentioned, he obtained the seat. But Roupell was not only a rogue, but a fool. By gambling and extravagance he soon ran through the fortune he had obtained by crooked means. Finding the detection of his crimes inevitable, he fled to Spain, but eventually returned, and gave himself up to justice, confessing the forgeries he had committed. Of course, the persons who had purchased property then became aware that the deeds by which they held it were worthless. The court considered his offences so serious that in 1862 it condemned him to penal servitude for life; but he was released after an imprisonment of fourteen years. In 1876 he left Portland a free man again. But it is with Roupell as a member of Parliament we are chiefly concerned. In that capacity he did not shine. He remained in the House long enough to prove that he was disqualified to represent a large borough like Lambeth. He took no part in the debates, nor did he appear to be able to grapple with and master any question connected with politics. Being asked one evening at the Horns, when meeting his constituents, why he did not speak in the House of Commons, he replied: 'Because I do not want to make a fool of myself.' Next morning the Times made merry with this confession. He was consequently regarded as a cipher, but he was supported by his supposed wealth. But soon suspicious murmurs began to be heard, and he prepared for his flight to Spain; and he decamped without making any application for the Chiltern Hundreds, so that for a considerable time his place in Parliament could not be filled up. Advertisements in Galignani apprised him of the omission, and at length the application was made. He did not meet with much pity, either from the public or the press; squibs without end appeared against him in the papers. We append a specimen of a short one:

'Now, the Lambeth folks this wealthy gent

As their member did decide on,

But little they knew he'd happened to do

Some things he didn't oughter;

For he'd forged a will and several deeds....

'And the public said: "Well, this here Roupell

Has got no more than he oughter."

So there was an end of the wealthy gent

As was member from over the water.'