“When the country folk first heard of this act,
That old father Style was condemned to be rack’d,
And robb’d of his time, which appears to be fact,
Which nobody can deny;
“It puzzl’d their brains, their senses perplex’d,
And all the old ladies were very much vex’d,
Not dreaming that Levites would alter our text;
Which nobody can deny.”
(The Jew’s Triumph.)
The business of the meeting, regarding the gluttony and drunkenness among the diversions, is centred in bribery. The Buff parliamentary agent has a seat next the unconscious municipal in the chair; before him is a ledger ruled with columns for “sure votes” and “doubtful.” The occupations of this important factotum are deranged by a flying brick from the opposition, which has struck home on his temple, bringing him down headlong, with destruction to objects around. Amid much horse-play and practical joking—to the strains of an extraordinary orchestra—promises of payment, bank-notes, and broad-pieces are being put into circulation. A lean Methodist tailor, with Blue sympathies, and who is suffering from qualms of conscience, is placed between two fires, the personal violence of his wife, with a half-shod offspring appealing for new shoes, while a clerkly agent is pressing on his acceptance a handful of silver coins to remove his pious scruples. Although bribery was so generally admitted, and stalked barefaced throughout the country, it was even then contrary to statute. With his usual irony, the painter has shown the “Act against Bribery and Corruption” turned into pipe-lights, and thrown aside in the tray of “long clays,” together with a packet of tobacco, for the use of smokers. This latter bears the name of “Kirton’s best,” and has its peculiar significance: Nichols records that Kirton “was a tobacconist by St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street, who ruined his health and constitution, as well as impaired his circumstances, by being busy in the Oxfordshire election of 1754.” The pictures on the walls, according to Hogarth’s practice, greatly assist the story: there is a view, presumably of Oxford from the river—the city is represented in flames; an undertaker’s escutcheon—the field sable bears three gold pieces, with a chevron, the motto “Speak and Have,” surmounted by an open mouth by way of crest proper. A portrait of William, Prince of Orange, as the Protestant prince of the Revolution, has been slashed across by rabid and indignant Jacobites, in allusion to the faction then supposed to have had much influence in Oxford; branches of laurel are entwined round a buff flag, marked “Liberty and Loyalty,” the standard of the party.
Further allusions to the respective Houses of Stuart and Hanover may be detected in the plate, “Canvassing for Votes,” in the signs of the “Royal Oak,” versus “The Crown.” All the taverns are pressed into the service of the candidates as a matter of course, the enterprising competitors striving to secure the preponderance of publicans, their interest, friends, and followers. “Tim Partitool, Esq.,” possibly a hit at Bubb Dodington, whose person, as sketched by Hogarth, may be identified in at least one picture of this series, is located at the “Royal Oak.” This enterprising gentleman, as depicted on his canvass, is nicknamed “Punch,” also indicative of Bubb’s unmistakable figure. A porter has brought two packages, evidently polling cards, inscribed, “Sir, your vote and interest;” one of these parcels is directed “at Punch’s, at the ‘Royal Oak’ Yard,” and to the candidate in question the bearer is presenting a note with the superscription, “Tim Partitool, Esq.” Above this gentleman’s head, and partly concealing the painted signboard of Charles II. in the oak, with the three crowns of the United Kingdom among the branches, is a pictorial poster in two compartments. In the upper one are shown the Treasury and Horse Guards, both burlesqued; while from the tall story of the former flows a stream of gold, which is being packed into sacks for conveyance by waggon into the country—there to be distributed for the purposes of bribery—to strengthen the party already in power, known as the Old Interest (their own). The way this is to come about is shown in the lower compartment of the painted cloth: “Punch, candidate for Guzzledown,” the farceur, with his protuberant rotundity of back and corporation, has a wheel-barrow before him, filled with bags of money, marked £7000 and £9000, and in all amounting to a considerable sum; he is casting about the broad-pieces in a shower from a ladle, and they are caught in the hats of expectant electors.
“See from the Treasury flows the gold,
To show that those who’re bought are sold!
Come, Perjury, meet it on the road—
’Tis all your own—a waggon-load.
Ye party fools, ye courtier tribe,
Who gain no vote without a bribe,
Lavishly kind, yet insincere,
Behold in Punch yourselves appear.
And you, ye fools, who poll for pay,
Ye little great men of a day,
For whom your favourite will not care,
Observe how much bewitch’d you are.”
The candidate is treating all around, within the inn, as seen in the bar-parlour, his followers are feeding gluttonously; in the balcony above are two fair nymphs, whose favour he is conciliating by purchasing trinkets from a Jew pedlar. A farmer voter of some influence, probably a squire of the Tony Lumpkin order, who has ridden into Guzzledown, is making the most of his opportunities: the landlords of the rival inns are ostensibly pressing him to accept invitations to dinner at the respective head-quarters; the host of the Royal Oak is pouring a shower of silver into the receptive palm held out by the wary elector, while the other hand receives the broad golden retainer of “The Crown.” The landlady has a lapful of money, while one of George’s grenadiers (like those seen in “The March to Finchley”) is slyly watching the reckoning of the plunder, probably with an eye to spoliation on his own account. The Crown, which is also the Excise Office, is the scene of an animated contest, rival bludgeon-men are in fierce conflict at the doorway, furniture and stones are being thrown about, and a man from the window is discharging a gun into the thick of the fray below—an allusion to a murderous episode which really occurred. The sign of the Crown, suspended to a huge beam, is in process of removal; a man above, on the wrong side of the support, is sawing it through, while confederates below are dragging it down by force: this is also figurative—the man above, who is assisting to demolish the Crown, will come down simultaneously, while those beneath it will be crushed by its fall. At a third house is the sign of the Porto Bello, at the side door of which is seen a barber demonstrating with pieces of tobacco-pipe the manner in which Porto Bello was itself taken with six ships only; his companion, a cobbler, has given up work, having received sufficient money from the elections to afford to forego toil for the present.
THE ELECTION AT OXFORD.—CANVASSING FOR VOTES. BY W. HOGARTH. 1754.
