Then call the British yeomanry to stop his peevish cries."
At Woburn, a market town forty miles from London, under the very shadow of a great Whig house, no political meeting could be held for fear of Pitt's spies, who dropped down from London by the night coach and returned to lay information against popular speakers; and when the politicians of the place desired to express their sentiments, they had to repair secretly to an adjacent village off the coach road, where they were harangued under cover of night by the young sons of the Duke of Bedford.
The ferocity, the venality, the profligate expenditure, the delirious excitement of contested elections have made an indelible mark on our political history. In 1780 King George III. personally canvassed the Borough of Windsor against the Whig candidate, Admiral Keppel, and propitiated a silk-mercer by calling at his shop and saying, "The Queen wants a gown—wants a gown. No Keppel. No Keppel." It is pleasant to reflect that the friends of freedom were not an inch behind the upholders of tyranny in the vigour and adroitness of their electioneering methods. The contest for the City of Westminster in 1788 is thus described in the manuscript diary of Lord Robert Seymour:—
"The Riotts of the Westr. Election are carried such lengths the Military obliged to be called into the assistance of Ld. Hood's party. Several Persons have been killed by Ld. J. Townsend's Butchers who cleave them to the Ground with their Cleavers—Mr. Fox very narrowly escaped being killed by a Bayonet wch. w'd certainly have been fatal had not a poor Black saved him fm. the blow. Mr. Macnamara's Life is despaired of—& several others have died in the difft. Hospitals. Next Thursday decides the business.
"July 25.—Lord John Townsend likely to get the Election—what has chiefly contributed to Ld. Hood's losing it is that Mr. Pulteney is his Friend—Mr. P. can command 1,500 Votes—& as he is universally disliked by his Tenants they are unanimous in voting against him— wch. for Ld. H. proves a very unfortunate circumstance. The Duke of Bedford sent £10,000 towards the Expenses of the Opposition.
"It is thought that Lord Hood will not attempt a Scrutiny. One of Ld. Hood's votes was discovered to be a carrot-scraper in St. James's Market who sleeps in a little Kennel about the Size of a Hen Coup.
"Augt. 5th—The Election decided in favour of Ld. J.T., who was chaired—and attend'd by a Procession of a mile in length. On his Head was a crown of Laurel. C. Fox follow'd him in a Landau & 6 Horses cover'd in Favors & Lawrels. The appearance this Procession made was equal in splendor to the public Entry of an Ambassador."
A by-election was impending in Yorkshire, and Pitt, paying a social visit to the famous Mrs. B.—one of the Whig Queens of the West Riding—said, banteringly, "Well, the election is all right for us. Ten thousand guineas for the use of our side go down to Yorkshire to-night by a sure hand." "The devil they do!" responded Mrs. B., and that night the bearer of the precious burden was stopped by a highwayman on the Great North Road, and the ten thousand guineas were used to procure the return of the Whig candidate. The electioneering methods, less adventurous but not more scrupulous, of a rather later day have been depicted in Pickwick, and Coningsby, and My Novel, and Middlemarch, with all the suggestive fun of a painting by Hogarth.
And so, with startling incidents and culpable expedients and varying fortunes, the great struggle for political freedom was conducted through the first thirty years of the nineteenth century, and it has been my interesting fortune to know some of the toughest of the combatants both among the leaders and in the rank-and-file. And from all of them alike—and not only from them, but from all who remembered the time—I have gathered the impression that all through their earlier life the hidden fires of revolution were smouldering under English society, and that again and again an actual outbreak was only averted by some happy stroke of fortune. At the Election of 1868 an old labourer in the agricultural Borough of Woodstock told a Liberal canvasser from Oxford that in his youth arms had been stored in his father's cottage so as to be in readiness for the outbreak which was to take place if Lord Grey's Reform Bill was finally defeated. A Whig nobleman, of great experience and calm judgment, told me that if Princess Victoria had died before William IV., and thereby Ernest Duke of Cumberland had succeeded to the Throne, no earthly power could have averted a revolution. "I have no hesitation in saying," I heard Mr. Gladstone say, "that if the repeal of the Corn Laws had been defeated, or even retarded, we should have had a revolution." Charles Kingsley and his fellow-workers for Social Reform expected a revolution in April 1848.
But, after all, these testimonies belong to the region of conjecture. Let me close this chapter by a narrative of fact, derived from the late Lord de Ros, who was an eye-witness of the events which he narrated. Arthur Thistlewood (whose execution for the "Cato Street Conspiracy" I have described in a previous chapter) was a young Englishman who had been in Paris in the time of Robespierre's ascendency, and had there imbibed revolutionary sentiments. He served for a short time as an officer in the English Army, and after quitting the service he made himself notorious by trying to organize a political riot in London, for which he was tried and acquitted. He subsequently collected round him a secret society of disaffected citizens, and proceeded to arrange a plan by which he hoped to paralyze Government and establish a Reign of Terror in London.
One evening, in the winter of 1819-20, a full-dress ball was given by the Spanish Ambassador in Portland Place, and was attended by the Prince Regent, the Royal Dukes, the Duke of Wellington, the Ministers of State, and the leaders of fashion and society. "About one o'clock, just before supper, a sort of order was circulated among the junior officers to draw towards the head of the stairs, though no one knew for what reason, except that an unusual crowd had assembled in the street. The appearance of Lavender and one or two well-known Bow Street officers in the entrance-hall also gave rise to surmises of some impending riot. While the officers were whispering to one another as to what was expected to happen, a great noise was heard in the street, the crowd dispersed with loud cries in all directions, and a squadron of the 2nd Life Guards arrived with drawn swords at a gallop from their barracks (then situate in King Street), and rapidly formed in front of the Ambassador's house. Lavender and the Bow Street officers now withdrew; the officers who had gathered about the stairhead were desired to return to the ballroom.
"The alarm, whatever it might have been, appeared to be over, and before the company broke up the Life Guards had been withdrawn to their barracks. Inside the Ambassador's house all had remained so quiet that very few of the ladies present were aware till next day that anything unusual had happened, but it became known after a short time that the Duke of Wellington had received information of an intended attack upon the house, which the precautions taken had probably prevented; and upon the trial of Thistlewood and his gang (for the Cato Street Conspiracy) it came out, among other evidence of the various wild schemes they had formed, that Thistlewood had certainly entertained the project, at the time of this ball, to attack the Spanish Ambassador's house, and destroy the Regent and other Royal personages, as well as the Ministers, who were sure to be, most of them, present on the occasion."
For details of the Cato Street Conspiracy the curious reader is referred to the Annual Register for 1820, and it is strange to reflect that these explosions of revolutionary rage occurred well within the recollection of people now[[11]] living, among whom I hope it is not invidious to mention Mr. Charles Villiers,[[12]] Lady Mary Saurin,[[13]] and Lady Glentworth.[[14]]