The poll closes at eight or nine o’clock. Ballot papers cannot be given out after that time. But any voters who have received papers before the hour has struck may put their votes into the ballot box. The presiding officer, in the presence of the agents of the candidates, then stops up the slot of the ballot box and seals it, so as to prevent the insertion of any more voting papers. The ballot box, securely locked, bound in red tape and sealed, is then brought by the presiding officer to the place appointed for the counting of the votes, which is usually the town hall or county hall, and is delivered up to the returning officer, together with a statement in writing of the number of ballot papers supplied to the polling station, and accounting for them under the heads of “used,” “unused,” and “spoilt,” and also the counterfoils of the used ballot papers, the unused ballot papers, the marked copies of the register of voters, and the list of tendered votes, all of which had been carefully made up in separate parcels and sealed before leaving the polling station.
CHAPTER IV
THE COUNTRY’S VERDICT
1
How simple and decorous is a parliamentary election nowadays compared with the tumultuous polling when voting was open, before the Ballot Act of 1872! In remote times an election was decided by a show of hands at a public meeting of the electors. The right of a candidate to challenge the decision on a show of hands and demand a poll was established in the reign of James I. However, it continued to be the practice for the sheriff or returning officer on the day of nomination still to ask for a show of hands on behalf of each of the candidates, and to declare for the one in whose support the larger number of hands had been uplifted. But as the majority of the crowd were usually non-voters, the demand for a poll by the other candidate followed as a matter of course. Formerly the election might last for a month, and the voting stations might be kept open until late into the night. Early in the nineteenth century a limit of fifteen days was fixed for the polling. The Reform Act of 1832 further reduced the period to two days, and provided also that the voting should take place between the hours of nine and four o’clock, with the option of opening an hour earlier on the second day, if the candidates agreed.
But on the polling days—whether forty, fifteen, or two—disorder and violence were common throughout the country at the General Election. Indeed, one of the first acts of a candidate was to have organized a mob of bludgeon men to protect himself and his adherents during the campaign, and also, of course, to intimidate the supporters of his opponent. Between the rival mobs the constituency was kept in a state of excitement and uproar during the polling. The most trying part of the contest was the ordeal of the hustings. These were temporary platforms erected in the square, at the market cross, or in some other open place of the borough or chief county town, where the candidates were proposed and seconded. The speeches were usually little better than mere dumb show. Each of the rival politicians made determined but usually vain efforts to convince the shrieking mob, amid showers of stones, mud, rotten eggs and dead cats, of the sublime virtue of his opinions, or of the utter depravity of the views of his opponent. The sort of item that was common in a candidate’s election bill before the Ballot Act was this: “To the employment of 200 men to obtain a hearing, 460s.” These men believed that the best way “to obtain a hearing” for their employer was to prevent his rival being heard; and as the hired mob on the other side was likewise animated by the same conviction, both candidates were equally shouted down. There is, for instance, the evidence of Bernal Osborne, a famous wit and Member of the House of Commons. “The honourable gentleman talked about the voice of the electors,” he said in a debate on old open-voting ways. “As if the individual voice of an elector was ever heard at a nomination, and as if there was not a general agreement to roar, to hiss, and become debased with drink! The true-born Englishman is said to delight in that day. Now, who are the true-born Englishmen?” he asked; and answered, “Why, the representatives of muscular Christianity—prize-fighters and people of that sort. I have spent as much money in retaining the services of those gentlemen as anybody in this House. One of my most efficient supporters in Nottingham was a man who was always clothed as a clergyman of the Church of England, but who was really an ex-champion of England, Bendigo by name.”
As an illustration of the treatment a candidate had to expect at the hustings, and of the style of speaking which was thought appropriate to the occasion, listen to Disraeli addressing the Buckinghamshire electors at Aylesbury. Received with a cry of “You look rather white,” he thus retorted: “I can tell you that it is at least not the white feather I show. [Laughter and cheers, mixed with howling.] If any member of the melodious company of owls [loud laughter] wishes to address you after me, I hope that you will give him a fair hearing. [Interruption.] I can tell the honourable gentleman who makes this interruption that if it were possible for him to express the slightest common sense in decent language, I should be ready to hear him. In the meantime I must say, from the symptoms of intelligence which he has presented to us to-day, I hope he is not one whom I number amongst my supporters.” (Cheers and laughter.) Disraeli, still directing his attention to his opponents, further said: “Your most brilliant argument is a groan, and your happiest repartee a hiss.” A voice then exclaimed: “Speak quick, speak quick!” for he was a slow speaker, and he retorted: “It is very easy for you to speak quick, when you only utter a stupid monosyllable; but when I speak I must measure my words. [Loud cheers and laughter]. I have to open your great thick head. [Laughter]. What I speak is to enlighten you. If I bawl like you, you will leave this place as ignorant as you entered it.” (Cheers and laughter.)
Another picture of a scene at the hustings which I call up from my reading on the subject is of a painful kind. It was in the year 1865, when there was a contest for Westminster, and from the hustings erected in Covent Garden, at the base of St. Paul’s Church, John Stuart Mill, the Radical candidate, addressed the crowd. In his pamphlet, Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, Mill bluntly said that the working classes, though ashamed of lying, were yet generally liars. This statement was printed on a placard by Mill’s opponent and aroused against Mill the animosity of the working men of the division. At one meeting he was asked whether he had really written such a thing. He at once answered, “I did,” and scarcely were the words out of his mouth when, as he states in his Autobiography, vehement applause burst forth. The working men present were, according to Mill, so used to equivocation and evasion, that this direct avowal took their fancy, and instead of being affronted, they concluded at once that Mill was a person whom they could trust. But Mill does not mention the hostile reception he got when he appeared on the hustings. Before the speaking commenced a member of the crowd asked an enthusiastic supporter of Mill which of the gentlemen on the hustings was the candidate. “There,” exclaimed the admirer, as he pointed at the author of the treatise On Liberty, “there is the great man.” “Then,” said the other, taking a dead cat from under his coat and flinging it at Mill, “let him take that.” When Mill afterwards spoke he was pelted by the porters of Covent Garden with the garbage of the market.
The mob influence exercised at elections—often the determining influence—might be intimidatory, but it was not always venal. These unsavoury arguments, dead cats and rotten apples, were at times the expression of sincere political convictions on the part of people without votes. As it was only by the use of violence in some form or another that non-voters could have weight in public affairs, the Chartists were opposed to the introduction of secret voting so long as the franchise was restricted to the comparatively few. They admitted that the ballot would be an excellent thing if universal suffrage were established under it. Until then they avowed their determination to see to it that the unfranchised part of public opinion should not be deprived of the chance of influencing the electors, under a system of open voting, by the methods of blacking eyes and smashing windows.