THE OLD BRENTFORD SHUTTLECOCK—JOHN HORNE TOOKE RETURNED FOR OLD SARUM. 1801.
Though the cause of Sir Francis Delaval suffered at Andover from a contretemps in which the commanding officer of the district was concerned, by an opposite course of events the return of Mr. N. Jefferys for Coventry was assured through military intervention. When writs were issued for a new parliament in 1802, a meeting was convened at Coventry, when it was resolved to invite Mr. Jefferys again to become a candidate to represent them, and to support his re-election. Upon Mr. Jefferys accepting this invitation, and proceeding down to Coventry to meet his constituents, his entrance into the city was unhandsomely opposed, a riot ensued, and things began to look dangerous, when Captain Barlow of the First Dragoon Guards, who happened to be there, his regiment being stationed in the neighbourhood, exerted himself with much spirit to quell the riot and protect the candidate and his friends from insult. Rarely has a casual and unexpected service been more singularly acknowledged; Captain Barlow was at once invited to join Mr. Jefferys as second Conservative candidate, which he readily accepted; the show of hands at the hustings was in his favour, and both were triumphantly returned. The contest was a close one; Captain Barlow stood at the head of the poll with 1197 votes, N. Jefferys was elected with 1190; and the two Whig candidates were defeated—Wilberforce Bird with 1182, and Peter Moore with 1152 votes.
The Middlesex election of 1804 vividly recalled the previous excitement manifested at the Brentford hustings on the return of John Wilkes; the new party of “root-and-branch reformers,” more extreme in their political views than the Foxites, were now becoming most conspicuous by their agitations for the revision of the Constitution, and began to be known under the designation of Radicals. At the head of these “patriots” in the House of Commons were several of the younger politicians and “new luminaries,” such as Whitbread, Lord Folkestone, and others; but the most prominent leader of the movement was Sir Francis Burdett, then occupying the position previously held by “Wilkes and Liberty” at the commencement of the reign, and by Fox before his secession from Parliament. Horne Tooke, who passed out-of-doors as the baronet’s political sponsor, “guide, philosopher, and friend,” was actively supporting his pupil, and William Cobbett was, by his energetic writings, proselytizing in the same cause, and was generally regarded as the apostle of the latest sect. In the same ranks were included the wealthy Bosville and other zealous partisans. At the Middlesex election of 1802, Sir Francis Burdett, in the Radical interest, had unseated the Tory candidate, W. Mainwaring, polling nearly double the votes obtained by the ministerial candidate, who had represented the county from 1784.
In 1804, the election for Middlesex was equally trying for the administration as the memorable struggle at Westminster in 1784, and recalled the scenes witnessed on the same spot in 1786. Gillray has commemorated this occurrence in one of his most elaborate caricatures, published August 7, 1804:—“Middlesex Election, 1804—a Long Pull, a Strong Pull, and a Pull All Together;” the hustings at Brentford appear in the distance, whereon the ministerial candidate is holding forth to an exuberant crowd, amidst which derisive symbols are displayed—a huge begging-box, a gallows with an effigy suspended, and a banner inscribed, “No Begging Candidate.” The head-quarters of the Court party, at the sign of the Constitution (a crown and mitre) placarded with posters, “Mainwaring, King, and Country,” and advertising “good entertainment,” is treated to a perfect shower of missiles and dirt; a free fight is proceeding at a distance. Beneath the standard claiming “Independence and Free Elections,” now a reasonable aspiration, but, in those days, regarded as little short of sedition, a rat is hung to a lantern, expressive of contempt for “ministerial rats.” Sir Francis Burdett is carried triumphantly to the hustings; his barouche, drawn by the most illustrious members of the opposition, is emblazoned on the panels with suggestive devices: “Peace” is figured as a French eagle, with the legend, “Égalité;” the Torch of Liberty is a flaming and incendiary brand; and “Plenty” is symbolized by a pot of porter with the head of Bonaparte on the measure. Beneath the wheels of Burdett’s chariot is figured a dog with “A Cur-tis” on his collar, a blow at Sir William Curtis, enriched by “fat” Government contracts; by him is Tooke’s tract, “A Squeeze for Contractors.” On the box is the baronet’s reputed preceptor, the Brentford Parson himself, “in his habit as he lived,” smoking his pipe like his confederate “Bellenden,” that “revolution sinner” Dr. Parr; from the prime agitator’s pockets fall the speeches, “hints,” and addresses it is implied he had prepared for his hopeful pupil.
MIDDLESEX ELECTION, 1804. A LONG PULL—A STRONG PULL—AND A PULL ALL TOGETHER. BY JAMES GILLRAY.
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“The Party” is doing its utmost to forward Burdett’s career, and to mortify the Ministry. Tyrwhitt Jones and General Fitzpatrick, eccentric and independent politicians, are leading the “marrow-bone and cleaver” music; two lines of influential Whig statesmen are propelling the car; Bosville, Grey, the Duke of Northumberland, the Marquis of Lansdowne, and the Duke of Norfolk in one file, and Lord Carlisle, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Derby, and Fox in the other, all travestied felicitously under disguises which the caricaturist has suggested as appropriate to their characters or situations. Lord Moira (Marquis of Hastings), with the prince’s plume on his instrument, is acting as drummer. Behind the carriage rides Erskine in his bar robes, with the cap of liberty on a pike, marked “The Good Old Cause.” Tierney has “The Key of the Bastille,” in allusion to Burdett’s exertions on behalf of the political prisoners with which the prisons, such as Coldbath Fields, were at that time filled; while Sheridan is raising aloft the pictorial version of the “Governor in All His Glory,” i.e. Pitt flogging Britannia, who is fixed in the pillory, of which an enlarged version appears.
