struggle which, when at its height, made an
election time almost a time of war, is best
told in the story of the Westminster elections.
It was discovered at a very early date that
the best way of cancelling the popular authority
(at such times paramount) was to introduce
into electioneering tactics everything
that could debase and stupify the people.
Electors of the humblest and weakest class
were systematically seduced into drunkenness,
set rolling in kennels, deprived of
self-respect, and paid to vote at the discretion
of the great men, who thus practised
on their weakness. They were debased
effectually; debased, coerced, contemned;
there came to be but one way of using
independent freemen, and the candidate at
an election who could roll the greatest
number of men in the mud, commonly
earned his seat. A clever writer published,
forty years ago, a novel entitled Melincourt,
in which Sir Oran Haut-ton, otherwise a
well-trained ouran-outang, was represented as
the successful candidate for the suffrages of
an enlightened constituency. There were at
that time, and had been long before that
time, a hundred boroughs for which, so
far as the votes of the electors went, the
seat might have been purchased for, and
presented to, ouran-outang.

He might even have had the seat, though
a majority of electors went to poll against
him. Thus, for instance, we will take the
case of the Bramber election in May,
seventeen hundred and eight. The borough
contained thirty electors. The return of
the election was to be made by the constable,
a man named Jup; who was, for substantial
reasons, a friend of the Lord
Windsor, who, in this case, stands for Sir
Oran. Jup had declared openly before the
election, that if Lord Windsor polled only
two votes he should be returned. On the
day of election, it being customary for the
constable to call up the electors in their
turn, Jup first called all the men whom he
knew to be upon his patron's side, fifteen
in number, including three who had no
legal votes: one of the three was a travelling
voter, who had come into Bramber
with a bolster, and there slept upon the
previous night, and who had been voting
recently at Monmouth in the same way,
for the same employer. Having secured
these fifteen votes, Jup next registered
twelve votes on the other side; then closed
the poll; although there were six men standing
before him, who applied to vote against
Lord Windsor. His lordship justified his
return—for he was returned—by saying that
the six refused men had not legal votes. Yet
he had thought their votes worth paying
twenty pounds a-piece for at a previous election;
and he had, not only offered the same
sum again to three of them on this occasion,
but, because they refused it, was then actually
suing them at law for the return of their
formerly accepted bribes, as for the return of
money lent.

A more curious instance of the audacity
with which little great men knew how to
follow the example of their masters, in
suppressing the true voice of the people at
election time, is to be found in the details of the
election for Chipping Wycomb, a borough
with a hundred voters, in the year seventeen
hundred and twenty-two. Richard Shrimpton,
the mayor, had, by help of Smales, an
alderman, made more than seventy honorary
freemen in the interval between one
election and another. Thus he secured possession
of his own morsel of power. Writs
being issued for a new election, this mayor
summoned the electors on an appointed day
to the town-hall, the usual polling place. He
had arranged with his own party, which
was far outnumbered; and, in accordance
with his plan, marched, at a rather later hour
than that named in his summons, to the
town-hall with mighty pomp and a great
number of drums, kettle-drums, trumpets,
hautboys, and other warlike music, attended
by the candidates he favoured, and a vast
retinue of servants and others. Thus he got
all the voters, not aware of his designs, into
the town-hall, as mice in a trap; but when
he, himself, was half-way up the stairs,
being twitched at the robe by Alderman
Smales, suddenly turned back; and, leaving a
guard at the door of the town-hall to prevent
the opposition voters from escaping,
made speed with his whole following to the
George ale-house, where he opened a poll
under the tap, and recorded votes of forty-nine
men for his candidate, but only two
against him; one, that of a drunkard who was
bidden so to vote, to save appearances. The
poll was then closed. Seventy-three legal
voters, shut up in the town-hall, signed a
protest, and some of them found their way
to the ale-house, when the riot act was read
to them, and they were ordered to disperse.
The mayor's man became the sitting member.

At Brecon, John Jefferys having received
the writ for a new election, kept it in his
pocket for four months, waiting until a sheriff
should be appointed whom he knew for a
stout friend. Then he suddenly produced
the writ one night, and had the poll opened
next morning in a place to which men voting
against him could not obtain access. When
any elector came to record a vote adverse to
Jefferys, the sheriff bullied him, and threatened
to commit him or undo him: on behalf of
Jefferys he polled all who came--including
infants--and menaced anybody with
imprisonment who offered protest. In spite of
all this, Jefferys was out-voted; but his
sturdy friend the new sheriff returned him
as knight of the shire.

At Bristol, in the beginning of the present
century, the power adverse to the popular
interest was represented by the Blues; and the
Blues not only paraded blue cockades, but