Chapter XII

The “royal” Duke of Norfolk an enthusiastic
“electioneerer”--Wilberforce’s electioneering experiences--His
contest for Hull--The price of freemen--The great fight for
Yorkshire, 1807--“The Austerlitz of Electioneering”--The
candidates, Wilberforce, Lord Milton and Lascelles--The
Fitzwilliam and Harewood interests--Three hundred thousand
pounds expended--The voluntary subscription to defray the
expenses of Wilberforce’s candidature--The poll--The county
in a state of ferment--Election wiles; false rumours;
“Bruisers”--All the conveyances bespoke--Wilberforce’s
victory--His motives for the contest--“Groans of the
Talents”--Personation--Female canvassers under false
colours--Travelling expenses of electors--Carrying cargoes
of freeholders by water--Kidnapping--The caricaturists on
elections--Customary episodes of a Westminster election,
delineated by Rowlandson and Pugin--George Cruikshank as
an election caricaturist--The “Speaker’s Warrant” for
committing Burdett to the Tower, 1810--“The Little Man in
the Big Wig,” 1810--“The Election Hunter,” 1812--“Saddle
White Surrey for Cheapside”--Southwark election, 1812--“The
Borough Candidates”--“An Election Ball,” 1813--The Westminster
election, 1818--“The Freedom of Election: or, Hunt-ing
for Popularity and Plumpers for Maxwell,” 1818--“Hunt, a
Radical Reformer”--“A Political Squib on the Westminster
Election,” 1819--“Patriot Allegory, Anarchical Fable, and
Licentious Parody”--Major Cartwright, an unsuccessful
candidate--Cartwright’s Petition to the House of Commons
on the needful reform of a corrupt representative
system, 1820--Statistics of borough-mongering--“Sinks
of corruption”--“353 members corruptly imposed on the
Commons”--The coming elections of 1820--John Cam Hobhouse--His
imprisonment--“Little Hob in the Well”--“A Trifling
Mistake--corrected,” 1820--Radicals--“The Root of the King’s
Evil; Lay the Axe to it,” 1820--The Riot Act--“The Law’s Delay.
Showing the advantage and comfort of waiting the specified time
after reading the Riot Act to a Radical Mob; or, a British
Magistrate in the Discharge of his Duties, and the People
of England in the Discharge of Theirs,” 1820--“The Election
Day”--Dissolution of Parliament, 1820--“Coriolanus addressing
the Plebs,” 1820--“Freedom and Purity of Election! Showing the
Necessity of Reform in the Close Boroughs,” 1820--“Radical
Quacks giving a new Constitution to John Bull,” 1820--Burdett
and Hobhouse as Radical Reformers 324