“A NEW SONG, TO THE TUNE OF ‘LET THE TOAST PASS.’
“To Fox and to Freedom we give our support,
Every Englishman feels it his duty,
When their cause is attack’d by the pow’r of the Court,
And defended by Virtue and Beauty.”
The turn of affairs which placed Fox in a majority over Sir Cecil Wray, who for some time was in advance of the Whig chief, is summed up by Rowlandson, amongst other caricaturists, as “The Case is altered” (April 29, 1784). The election had nearly another three weeks to run, but already the satirists were forecasting the result. Fox, be it remembered, had other resources in reserve, and, at the close of the poll, when Wray demanded a scrutiny, and the high bailiff illegally declined to make his return, he was seated for Kirkwall. In the caricaturist’s version, the election has already settled Wray’s chances, and Fox is magnanimously driving off his defeated opponent, and late dependent, to Lincoln: the ministerial candidate is travelling, “without drums or trumpets,” smuggled away from the exciting platform of the hustings, in the “Lincolnshire caravan for paupers;” he is buried in self-contemplation,—“I always was a poor dog, but now I am worse than ever.” The generous Fox, charioteering his renegade protégé, is volunteering, “I will drive you to Lincoln, where you may superintend the small beer and brickdust.” Lord Hood’s majority was safe at the head of the poll,—for no reason which history has made manifest; he is pictured as suddenly surprising the degrading pauper-conveyance, and, in compassion for his late colleague, is exclaiming, much moved at these reverses, “Alas, poor Wray!”
MAN HAS HIS HOBBY-HORSE—FOX AND THE DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE.
The doings of the Duchess of Devonshire, her sister, Lady Duncannon, and their fair following of female canvassers are pictorially treated by the caricaturist in his version of “The Procession to the Hustings after a Successful Canvass,” in which a select group of outlying voters, secured after much exertion, are seen conducted in triumph, and with “rough music,” to the polling-place. The circumstance that, chiefly owing to the opportune assistance of the Duchess, Fox was placed second on the poll was commemorated in “Every Man has his Hobby-horse.” Fox may truly be said to have been carried into the House of Commons by his fair coadjutor.
THE PROCESSION TO THE HUSTINGS AFTER A SUCCESSFUL CANVASS. BY T. ROWLANDSON.
“Come, haste to the Hustings, all honest Electors,
No menace, no brib’ry shall keep us away:
Of Freedom and Fox be for ever protectors,
We scorn to desert them, like Sir Cecil Wray.
“Then come, ev’ry free, ev’ry generous soul,
That loves a fine girl and a fine flowing bowl,
Come here in a body, and all of you poll
’Gainst Sir Cecil Wray.