‘And now the poll begins. The assessors sit
Sublimely sure that what is writ is writ.
The lawyers watch the votes. The skies look down
Unpardonably calm, nor heed the town.’
In how many novels elections figure, I need not say. The name of political tales is legion, and merely to enumerate them would occupy a fair amount of space. Who, for example, does not remember the contest pictured by George Eliot in ‘Felix Holt’—that which leads to the riot in which Felix becomes unintentionally and unfortunately embroiled? ‘The nomination day,’ says the novelist, ‘was a great epoch of successful trickery, or, to speak in a more parliamentary manner, of war-stratagem, on the part of skilful agents.’ And she goes on to describe
‘the show of hands, and the cheering, the bustling and the pelting, the roaring and the hissing, the hard hits with small missiles and the soft hits with small jokes.’
Of the polling day, she writes:
‘Every public-house in Treby was lively with changing and numerous company. Not, of course, that there was any treating; treating necessarily had stopped, from moral scruples, when once “the writs were out;” but there was drinking, which did equally well under any name.’
This was in 1832. In 1840 there was published at Dublin a tale, entitled ‘The Election,’ in which the author bluntly declared that ‘bribery and perjury are the returning officers.’ He was, in truth, a very ‘high-toned’ writer, for we find him declaiming vigorously against that which Sterling mentions as one of the canvassing weapons of a candidate—‘the practice of shaking hands with all and every person whose vote is solicited, whether they be old friends or the acquaintance of the moment.’ There are, we are told, ‘cases when such buxom familiarity is out of place—when it assumes too much the appearance of vulgar cajolery to be received as a compliment.’ Elsewhere we come across an instructive bit of talk between an Irish maiden lady of a certain age, and one of the gentlemen who desires her ‘vote and interest.’ The lady protests that she does not know the difference between the Whigs, the Tories, and the Radicals:
‘I know two of them are in the history of England, where they gave trouble enough, whatever they were. But as for the Radicals, it is a newspaper word that I can’t say I’m well acquainted with.’
Whereupon the candidate replies that all he can say for the Whigs is that
‘they are very fair spoken, when it suits their convenience. But the Radicals are a foul-mouthed race, on all and every occasion, and are the bitter enemies to Church and State.’
Nevertheless, the contest (of course an Irish one) which forms the main feature of the tale, ends in the return of Sir Andrew Shrivel, the Radical, together with Thaddeus O’Sullivan Gaffrey, Esq., representing the Nationalists.