THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AND WESTMINSTER HALL FROM THE RIVER IN 1798 (FROM A CONTEMPORARY DRAWING).
In the year 1710, Swift says that the rabble surrounded his coach, and he was afraid of having dead cats thrown in at the window, or getting his glass broken. The part played by the dead cat in all eighteenth-century functions, elections, pillories, and outdoor speeches, was quite remarkable. In times of peace and quiet we hear of no dead cats. The streets did not then, and do not now, provide a supply of dead cats to meet all demands. It would seem as if all the cats of all the slums were slaughtered for the occasion. Throughout the last century the elections of Westminster became more and more riotous; there were riots and ructions in 1711 and in 1721; in 1741 these were quite surpassed by the contested election in which Lord Sundon and Sir Charles Wager were candidates on the one side,—the Court side,—and Admiral Vernon and Mr. Charles Edwin on the other. Lord Sundon, a newly created Irish peer, took upon himself to close the poll by the help of a detachment of Guards before it was finished. One vote an hour was supposed to keep the poll open. The returning officer, however, disregarding this convention, and, by Lord Sundon’s order, declared the poll closed and Lord Sundon with Sir Charles Wager duly elected. There was indignation; there was a question, which led to a debate in the House; and finally the election was declared illegal. The victory thus obtained by the populace against the Court party was celebrated long afterward by an annual dinner of the “Independent Electors.” It marks the change in our management of these things that there should have been a Court party, and that the Court should think it consistent with its dignity to take an active part in any election. That the king should openly side with this or that candidate shows that the sovereign, a hundred and fifty years ago, stood on a much lower level than the sovereign of to-day.
The longest and fiercest contest, the one with the most doubtful issues, the most violent of all the Westminster elections, was that of the year 1784. Of this election there was published a most careful record from day to day. I suppose there is no other election on record of which such a daily diary has been preserved. It appeared toward the end of the same
OAK DOORWAY DISCOVERED IN THE SPEAKER’S DINING-ROOM AFTER THE FIRE.
year, and was published by Debrett, a Piccadilly bookseller. The anonymous authors, who modestly call themselves “Lovers of Truth and Justice,” begin the work with a narrative of the events which led to the Dissolution of March 25, 1784; they then proceed to set down the story of the Westminster election from day to day; they have reproduced many of the caricatures, rough, coarse, and vigorous, with which Rowlandson illustrated the contest; they have published all the speeches; they have collected the whole of the Election literature, with the poems, squibs, epigrams, attacks, and eulogies, which appeared on either side. Not only is there no other record, so far as I know, of any election so complete as this, but there has never been any other election, so far as I know, where the fight was fiercer, more determined, more unscrupulous, and of longer duration. The volume is, I believe, somewhat scarce and difficult to procure. Its full title is “The History of the Westminster Election, containing every Material Occurrence, from its Commencement, on the First of April, to the Final Close of the Poll, on 17th of May, to which is Prefixed a Summary Account of the Proceedings of the Late Parliament, so far as they appear Connected with the East India Business and the Dismission of the Portland Administration, with other Select and Interesting Occurrences at the Westminster Meetings, Previous to its Dissolution on the 25th Day of March 1784.”
This long title-page promises no more than the volume performs. It is proposed, therefore, to reproduce in these pages, with the assistance of the “Lovers of Truth and Justice,” the history of an election as it was conducted a hundred years ago.
The Dissolution of March, 1784, and the causes which led to it, belong to the history of the country and to the life of Charles James Fox. Let us accept the fact that the General Election was held in April; that the candidates for Westminster were Admiral Lord Hood and Sir Cecil Wray on the Ministerial side, and Fox for the Opposition. The former was also the Court side; the candidates on that side were called the King’s friends; the King himself took the keenest interest in the daily progress of the poll; he peremptorily ordered all the Court servants, the Court tradesmen, and the Court dependents to vote for Hood and Wray; and he actually sent a body of two hundred and eighty Guards to vote on that side. No king, in fact, ever interfered with an election more openly, more actively, or with less dignity. The