Chapter IX

“The Spendthrift Election,” Northampton, 1768--Expensive
contests, the defeated men appearing in the
_Gazette_--Colchester; Hampshire--Three noble patrons
adversaries at Northampton: the Earls of Halifax,
Northampton, and Spencer--Open-house at ancestral seats--The
“perdition of Horton”--The petition and scrutiny on the
Northampton election--The event referred to chance--Cost
of the contest--The results of the reckless expenditure
upon the fortunes of the patrons--Sir Francis Delaval at
Andover, 1768--His attorney’s bill: item, “to being Thrown
out of window, £500”--Reckoning without the host--An
hospitable entertainment--Returning thanks--The Mayor
_versus_ the Colonel--“Sir Jeffery Dunstan’s Address to
the Electors of Garratt,” 1774: a parody upon election
manifestoes-“Lord Shiner’s Appeal to the Electors of
Garratt”--Bribery at elections, and “controverted election
petitions”--Various methods of acquiring “Parliamentary
interest”--Boroughs cultivated for the market, like
other saleable commodities--Patronage--Buying up
burgage-tenures--Recognized prices of votes--The Ilchester
tariff--“Dispensers of seats”--Lord Chesterfield’s experience
of borough-jobbing--The seven electors of Old Sarum--Typical
sinks of corruption--Boroughbridge, Yorkshire--“The last
of the Boroughbridges”--A solitary franchise-holder; one
man returning two representatives--The bribery scrutiny,
Hindon, 1774--203 bribed electors out of a constituency of
210--Wholesale corruption--Bribing candidates committed to the
King’s Bench--A fine of “a thousand marks”--Boroughmongering
at Milborne Port--Lord North’s agent--A wholesale purchase
of “bailiwicks”--Supineness of the Commons and ministerial
influence--Corrupt bargains ignored by the House--Illegal
interference of peers and lords of parliament in elections;
Westminster election, 1774--“Money, meat, drink, entertainment
or provision”--The partiality of persons in power manifested
at “election bribery commissions”--The “king’s menial servants
disqualified”--“Direct solicitation of the peers”--Worcester,
1774, wholesale swearing-in of electors as special
constables--Convenient formula for defeating evidence of
bribery before the House--High-Sheriffs returning themselves,
Abingdon, 1774--The instance of Sir Edward Coke--“The sheriff
in no respect the returning officer for boroughs”--The
election made void by the sheriff returning himself--Morpeth,
1774--An election determined by main force--The candidate
forcibly returning “himself and friend”--A “bribing” candidate
preferred to a “main-force” candidate--Petersfield, Hants--The
Shaftesbury “Punch,”--Pantomimic method of distributing
bribes--The mysterious “Glenbucket”--Sudbury, 1780--A wager on
the result of a controverted petition--A mayor insisting upon
carrying on an election all night--The Shaftesbury “Punch”
outdone by the Shoreham “Christian Society”--A well-organized
scheme for “burgessing business”--The “Society” a “heap of
bribery”--Stafford, 1780; The price paid by R. B. Sheridan
for his seat--Tom Sheridan a candidate for Stafford, on his
father’s retirement, 1806--The successful candidate for
Stafford presented with a new hat at the hustings, by a
subscription of his constituents--“A Mob-Reformer,” 1780--The
first entry into public life of William Pitt--“The spirit of
the country in 1780”--Pitt seated for Appleby, one of Sir James
Lowther’s pocket-boroughs--Pitt’s early political friends:
the Duke of Rutland and Lord Euston--Pitt’s letter to his
mother, Lady Chatham, on his coming election--No necessity to
visit constituencies--Choice of seats offered to the young
premier, 1784--Nominated for the City of London--Invited
to stand for Bath, represented by his late father Earl
Chatham--Pitt returned for the University of Cambridge,
1784, which he represented till his death--The dissolution
delayed by the theft of the Great Seal from the Chancellor’s
residence, 1784--Pitt’s letter to Wilberforce on the coming
elections--Pitt “a hardened electioneerer”--The war carried
into the great Whig strongholds--The subscription to forward
Wilberforce’s return for Yorkshire--Earl Stanhope on “Fox’s
Martyrs”--Fox’s courage under adversity--Wilkes returned as the
ministerial representative for Middlesex--Wilkes’s “address
to the electors”--“The Back-stairs Scoured”--“The boldest
of bilks”--“Reconciliation of the Two Kings of Brentford,”
1784--“The New Coalition,” 1784--Charles James Fox’s first
entry into public life--Returned for Midhurst, 1769--His first
speech on the Wilkes case--Wilkes at a levée: he denounces to
the king his friend Glynn as a “Wilkite”--Canvass of Pitt’s
friends--The poet Cowper’s description of Pitt’s cousin, the
Hon. W. W. Grenville, seeking for suffrages--The amenities of
canvassing in the old days: saluting the ladies and maids--A
most loving, kissing, kind-hearted gentleman--W. W. Grenville
and John Aubrey returned for Buckinghamshire, 1784 226