The candidate’s address is one of those confused harangues in which a number of subjects are incongruously involved together, known in later days as “a stump oration.” Among other subjects, Dr. Graham’s “celestial beds,” recruiting for the army, polygamy, and divorce, “the delicate brave men of the association” (volunteer force), and an “effete nobility,” are all mixed up according to the following sample:—
“As my honourable friend Mr. Burke cannot lessen the influence of the Crown, myself and his grace of Richmond are determined to accomplish it, by abolishing the use of money entirely; it being irrevocable poison to men’s souls, and the only remedy existing to prevent Bribery and Corruption; an evil which all the learned gentry of Westminster Hall could never annihilate; and I do faithfully declare, being no placeman, that I will not waste my fleeting moments like the four city members, whose elements of oratory what Roman senator could ever equal.”
The address rambles through a variety of absurdities, and concludes with a quotation from Rusted’s “Poems.” Whoever that worthy may have been, his lines have a fine air of burlesque grandiloquence, sense being subordinated to sound:—
“Like those brave men, who nobly shed their blood,
I’ll die a Martyr for my Country’s good.
Be to my Sov’reign ever just and true,
And yield to Britain what is Britain’s due.
Maintain the cause, and thro’ the globe impart
The bright effusions of an honest heart.”
The foregoing is found in the collection of ballads and broadsides which it delighted Miss Banks to accumulate. It will be remembered that eccentric lady was sister to Sir Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society, and one most instrumental in founding the British Museum, to which his collections and those of his sister were left. Among Miss Banks’s “Political and Miscellaneous Broadsides” is another electoral appeal to the same fanciful constituency; the document otherwise seems almost a literal copy of an actual address of the day:—
“TO THE NOBILITY, GENTRY, CLERGY, AND FREEMEN OF THE ANCIENT CORPORATIVE TOWN OF GARRATT.
“My Lords and Gentlemen,
“Your Vote, Interest, and Poll (if needful) is earnestly desired for Thomas, Lord Shiner, to be your representative in Parliament, being a person zealously attached to the King and Queen, and their numerous offspring of Princes and princesses, and an enemy to all arbitrary Laws.
“His Lordship’s Committee for conducting the Election is held at the ‘Three Jolly Butchers,’ and ‘Black Moor’s Head,’ Brook’s Market, at which places his Lordship begs the audience of his Friends.
“N.B.—His Lordship’s colours are Blue and Orange.
“⁂ Carriages will be ready on the Day of Election.”
Those corrupted electors of Shoreham who resolved themselves into a purchasable community on their own account, were roughly handled by the parliamentary inquisitors, but the avowed and professional traffickers in venal boroughs seemed to conduct their trade openly, and, with the great parliamentary lights, unadmonished and unexposed. They were generally the agents of those who had secured the influence in the seats by various methods—some by inheritance, others by patronage, sometimes by purchase en bloc, but generally en détail. Men invested in boroughs and cultivated them for sale, secure of a profitable mart when the proper season arrived; the burgage-houses were bought and accumulated; “shambles on old foundations” carrying voting qualifications were secured; burgage tenures were bought up; voters were pensioned from year to year, the process varying according to the nature of the suffrage. As in the case of Sheridan’s expenses at Stafford, the independent electors were retained at a settled price per head. Sheridan’s cost him five guineas per burgess; Wilberforce found four guineas the price at Hull for a plumper. Southey says it rose to £30 a vote at Ilchester, Somerset, where the burgesses had a direct control over their borough; although the tariff ran high, the four candidates who recklessly bribed the constituents in 1774 lost their pains and money, petitions and counter-petitions establishing that the members returned and those who alleged they were unjustly rejected were alike so palpably culpable of corruption that the election was declared void. In 1826, Ilchester is given in the “Manual” as under the patronage of Sir W. Manners. Irrespective of the local and lesser bargains made with the mayors and burgesses, there was the “big business” conducted on behalf of the actual individual landholders of the place—those magnates set down in the election lists of constituencies as “patrons” of boroughs, the dispensers of seats.
For an instance of the facility which characterized the modus operandi, though “the prices ruled high” owing to extraneous demands, see the “Letters” of that skilled courtier, Lord Chesterfield, deeply versed in political chicanery and combination. In a passage of a letter dated Bath, December 19, 1767, he writes to that hopeful youth who by “Chesterfield’s Letters” was to be polished into a fine gentleman, and for whom a place in Parliament was a desirable opening—
“In one of our conversations here this time twelvemonth I desired my Lord Chatham to secure you a seat in the new parliament. He assured me he would, and, I am convinced, very sincerely.... Since that I have heard no more of it, which made me look out for some venal borough; and I spoke to a borough-jobber, and offered five and twenty hundred pounds for a secure seat in parliament; but he laughed at my offer, and said that there was no such thing as a borough to be had now, for the rich East and West Indians had secured them all, at the rate of three thousand pounds at least, but many at four thousand, and two or three that he knew at five thousand. This, I confess, has vexed me a good deal.”