“A Scotchman who had been in India, who had been in Parliament during two sessions, who had brought articles of charge against the elder Wellesley for his conduct while Governor-General of India, who was a little man in point of size, who talked pretty well, who wrote better than half of the 658, who was perfectly honest and disinterested, and who was brave to the backbone, and persevering beyond any man. The Whigs had all along been deceiving this Mr. Paull, as they always have done every one else who has trusted in them. They, by leading him to believe that they would support his charge against old Wellesley, induced him to go on with the charges until they themselves got into power, and then they turned against him, and set all their whispering myrmidons to work to spread about that he had been a tailor, and that he was only accusing Lord Wellesley in order to get some money from him. I became acquainted with Mr. Paull, from his having been introduced to me by Mr. Windham, who strongly urged me to render him any assistance in my power in his undertaking against Wellesley; and I can truly say, that a more disinterested and honourable man I never knew in my life.
“At this election, therefore, Mr. Paull was fixed upon for us to put forward, in order to break up the infamous combination of these two factions, and to rescue Westminster from the disgrace of submitting to them any longer. This was my work:[1] it was my own project: I paved the way to it by my addresses to the people of Westminster.… Hood was the Tory candidate; Sheridan the Whig candidate, having Whitbread and Peter Moore for his bottle-holders. They beat the people, but it was such a beat as pronounced their doom for the future, as far as Westminster was concerned. At the close of the election, Hood and the base Sheridan slipped away from the hustings into the Church of St. Paul, Covent Garden, just opposite the porch of which the hustings stood, and there they were locked up nearly all the night, with constables and policeman to guard the church.… Being in November, there was a plentiful supply of mud, with which the honourable representatives were covered all over from the forehead down to their shoes. I never shall forget them. They looked just like a couple of rats, raked up from the bottom of a sewer; and the High Bailiff, and his books, and his clerks, and his beadles, were all covered over in the same manner.”
Mr. Paull had started at the top of the poll. But as the days wore on, the others gained slowly upon him, until, at the close, he was left in a small minority. It was found, however, upon an analysis of the voting, that Paull had polled 3077 plumpers, against Sheridan’s 955, and Sir Samuel Hood’s 1033, whilst the coalition of the two latter had given them each 3240 split votes. Paull’s total was 4481. These figures were solemnly put upon record by the friends of reform (as they now called themselves), in order to show “the manner in which Mr. Paull had been defeated.”
An interesting conflict ensued, between Cobbett and Sheridan, which must not go unnoticed. When the former was attacked by Sheridan in parliament, in August, 1803 (as before related), it was a wilful and unnecessary throwing down of the gauntlet. Mr. Sheridan was not the man who should find fault with another’s popularity-hunting, much less another’s inconsistency; and Mr. Cobbett proceeded to give him the inevitable “Series of Letters,”[2] with which he usually favoured the objects of his animadversion. Mr. Sheridan, now crowing on the Westminster hustings, imputes low birth to his opponents; Mr. Paull’s father was only a tailor, and, as for his bottle-holder, why all the world knows his story. And all the world (except Mr. Sheridan) might have guessed what would have come of that. “Whence came the Sheridans? From a play-actor! from a member of that profession, the followers of which are, in our wise laws, considered and denominated vagabonds.” And Mr. Cobbett proceeds further, and wants to know what are the public services of these persons, Sheridan and his son Thomas, that they should be receiving between seven and eight thousand pounds of the public money? So Tom Sheridan offers to fight, according to a speech of his own at a Sheridan dinner:—
“This man, for his roughness and vulgarity towards my father (whom I think I may fairly describe as the person in whom eloquence may be said to preside), I had intended to thrash, and for that purpose I went down to his house with a cane, but he was not at home. I afterwards thought it best to offer him a pistol, and wrote to him for the purpose, but this valiant Mr. Cobbett answered me by saying that he never fought duels.”
Of course, the only utility of this sort of thing, was to provide material for satire; and Cobbett, on his part, never failed to remind Sheridan of his foibles, nor ceased to look upon his “statesmanship” with the contempt it deserved.
The result of this general election was promising enough, to the increasing band of reformers. But, another dissolution, in the following spring, gave a still greater impulse to the popular feeling. Sir Francis Burdett and Lord Cochrane headed the poll at Westminster, leaving Elliott (a Windhamite), Sheridan, and Paull out in the cold. It was as early as this that Mr. Cobbett began to suspect Burdett’s sincerity concerning Reform; and he refused, on account of Sir Francis declining to act with Paull,[3] to interfere in this election, although Lord Cochrane begged him to do so. But the powerful Register was as active as ever in the contest of principles which was being waged.