R ebel daring where thou durst,
E ager to promote French strollers,
N one but poltroons are thy pollers.
T ribes of nose-led clerks and placemen,
H ackney voters, (bribes disgrace men,)
A ll forswear, through thick and thin,
M eanness theirs, but thine the sin."
This election gave birth to some incidents apparently trifling, which yet make a material figure in British history, from their connexion with the vindication of the privileges of the House of Commons. The Honourable Alexander Murray, brother of Lord Elibank, a gentleman who will probably be again called up in a future part of these pages, was charged along with Mr. Crowle, an attorney, and another person, with the use of "threatening and affronting expressions," by the high bailiff. They were brought before the bar of the House, and after some discussion and inquiry, Crowle confessed, was submissive, received the usual reprimand on his knees, and wiped them when he rose, saying, it was "the dirtiest house he had ever been in." Murray denied the charge, and resisted the House, "smiled," as Walpole says, "when he was taxed with having called Lord Trentham and the high bailiff, rascals," and, finally, refused to kneel, saying, "Sir, I beg to be excused, I never kneel but to God." Then followed imprisonment, and embarrassing questions about the prisoner's health, which, sinking under his self-inflicted imprisonment, reproached those who could not turn back on the course they had taken; the whole being rendered more complex by the difficulty of finding a guiding rule in the precedents of the House, until parliament was adjourned; and he left Newgate in a triumphant procession, proclaiming the device of "Murray and Liberty."
[307:1] Viz. in a volume of broadsides and other documents, in the possession of James Maidment, Esq. of which the pieces in the preceding note are specimens. To show how such inquiries are beset by tantalizing coincidences, there are two James Frasers mentioned on the Trentham side, one of them having after his name on a printed list of voters, the significant MS. notandum, "Don't pay."