The truth was that the Court had really defeated Dodington. Lord Poulett, a lord of the bedchamber, “had acted openly against him with all his might;” and this action on the part of the higher powers had carried the Government employees, so that “five out of the Custom-house officers gave single votes for Lord Egmont.”
“The next head was—that, in spite of all, I had a fair majority of legal votes, for that the Mayor had admitted eight bad votes for Lord Egmont, and refused fifteen good ones for me; so that it was entirely in their own hands to retrieve the borough, and get rid of a troublesome opponent, if they pleased; that if the king required this piece of service, it was to be done, and the borough put into Whig hands, and under his influence, without any stretch of power.”
The intricacies of electioneering are supplanted by those of statecraft from this point; Bubb’s diary rehearses—spread over four months—the reasons for and against petitioning for a just return; but it peeps out, and therein lies the rub—that Dodington has inflamed the Tories by his assistance in Dorset. Now, just at this time, the Duke of Newcastle sought to make friends with the opposition; and it occurred to this slippery tactician that, as Dodington had had the sole onus of trying to keep out the Tories and failed, if he allowed Lord Egmont to retain his seat for Bridgwater, it would purchase his allegiance without the cost and inconvenience of putting some post or piece of state preferment at his disposal. Thus did Dodington sacrifice both his money and pains without conciliating the favour of the king, with whom the ambitious courtier was the reverse of popular.
One important feature of electioneering, missing in the later days, was the edifying practice of “Burning a Prime Minister,” making effigies of unpopular candidates and obnoxious ministers for burnt-offerings.
A caricature appeared in 1756 representing a street, in the precincts of Westminster it is presumed, filled with a crowd of enthusiastic patriots on their way to make a bonfire of the offending minister in effigy. The figure wears a cocked hat, and has a wig and mask, evidently copied from those of the living prototype, mounted on a stick; the coat and gloves are stuffed; the legs are sticks, bound up into a rude resemblance to stockings and shoes. The effigy is strapped on horseback. At the rear is a gibbet, on which the dummy premier is to be finally suspended. One of the mob bears a supply of faggots. Beneath this pictorial satire, which is executed something in the style of Sayer, the caricaturist of a later date, appear the verses:—
“Were you in effigy to burn
Each treacherous statesman in his turn,
What better would Britannia be,
Whilst the proud knaves themselves are free?
Knaves have brought disgrace upon her!
Have bought her votes and sold her Honour!”
BURNING A PRIME MINISTER IN EFFIGY. 1756. (FROM DR. NEWTON’S COLLECTION.)
The following manifesto explains the object of this publication, an appeal “Against Corruption,” and directed to securing the purity of elections against Ministerial bribery. The subject of the squib was evidently suggested by the Guy Fawkes processions of November. It appeared at the time when the Newcastle and Fox administration was near its fall and after those expensive elections in which the duke had spent enormous sums in bribery.
“Who can call to remembrance without abhorrence the behaviour of a Whiggish Ministry, who, neglecting everything else but the business of Bribery and Corruption, reduced the credit of the Nation and themselves to so low an ebb, that at length they were obliged to import Hessian and Hanoverian Troops to support an immense unconstitutional standing army, in defending them and their measures at home; whilst our perfidious enemies ravaged and distressed our wretched Colonies in every other part of the globe. Now it would be well for England if the several Tory or motley administrations since that time could demonstrate that they have spent less time and treasure in the same destructive employment. As a tree is known by its fruit, so is a bad minister by his attempting to influence Electors, or even to gain a Majority of the Elected by any other means than the justice of his measures; otherwise the use of a national Council is superseded; and when a King is thus deprived of the disinterested deliberations of his people in Parliament, the authors of the undue influence are certainly guilty of Treason in the strictest sense of the word.”