blue bludgeons. In eighteen hundred and
twelve there were found in the house of an
agent of Mr. Davis, one of the Blue candidates,
one thousand eight hundred bludgeons
painted blue. At the election in that year,
one of the anti-blue candidates was Sir
Samuel Romilly. He was compelled to retire
on the eighth day of polling. The True Blue
candidate went on his canvass attended by
nine-tenths of the churchwardens, overseers,
and tax-gatherers of the town. The several
parishes furnished eighteen vestries, and each
vestry was distinctly and formally organised
as an election committee in the Blue interest,
acting under orders from the White Lion, or
Loyal Constitutional Club. When Mr. Davis
was canvassing in any parish, the bells of
that parish rang until he crossed its bounds,
and then the bells of the next parish he had
entered set up their peal. The ringing continued
until another church had to announce
the transfer of the honour to its parish. On
the day of polling, some of Sir Samuel
Romilly's men were beaten from the booth
by bludgeon-men, led by a prize-fighter named
Watson. The sheriff faintly but ineffectually
ordered Watson to be taken into custody.
The other liberal candidate, Mr. Hunt, obtaining
leave to act upon his own responsibility,
dashed forward upon Watson, struggled
with him, and dragged him to the sheriff: by
whom he was given into the custody of six
constables, for conveyance into the presence of
the sitting magistrate. On the road the six
constables let him escape. Every Blue voter,
apart from any other bribe, received seven
and sixpence after polling; but, in subsequent
years, this money payment was in part changed
to a Christmas distribution of Blue beef.
Oxen decorated with blue ribbons were
paraded through the town, and each elector
who had plumped for the Blue candidate received
fourteen pounds of Blue beef and three
Blue quartern loaves; but for a split vote only
seven pounds of beef were given. Bludgeon-men
on the stairs of the Guildhall beat back
those who came up wearing the wrong colours.
The names of poor men who had
voted on a previous occasion for the popular
candidate were marked for their ruin—set
down in lists, with their trades and addresses,
and hung up in public-houses, posted on
walls; even affixed by churchwardens to the
doors of churches. Charity money was spent
upon election beer, and was refused to poor
freemen who had not voted for the Blues. A
seat for the city of Bristol was not, in those
days, to be had for less than twenty thousand
pounds.

At Stafford, freemen voted in turn, according
to the alphabetical arrangement of their
names; and, as votes became more precious
when the poll began to draw towards the
close, W. or Y, got a better price for his vote
than A. or B.; therefore, to have a name beginning
with a late letter was looked upon
in Stafford as a lucky thing. It was in the
same town that there existed, about forty
years ago, a club consisting of as many freemen
as secured a candidate's election; so
many, and no more. This club then took the
bribery money offered by each candidate,
in a lump and shared it among its members.
That was the reason of their care
that there should not be one member more
in the club than necessary. This club had
also a tail, composed of candidates for the
next vacancies; and men of the club's tail
generally voted with the club unbribed,
because they lived in hope of bribery by-and-bye.

At York, the debasement of the freemen
was reduced to system in another way. They
had a market price for their votes, which
went, like any other goods, to the first purchaser;
one pound being the charge for a split
vote, two pounds for a plumper. In another
town it was usual to add to the money price
for any vote, a pig; and candidates became
dealers in swine on an extensive scale, as
literally as they were so in other places
metaphorically. To Newcastle-on-Tyne,
burgesses used to be brought from London at an
expense of fifty or sixty pounds a-piece, and
the cost of a contested election usually was
to each candidate thirty thousand pounds.

But such costs were nothing to those
of the Northampton borough election, in
seventeen hundred and sixty-eight; even now
remembered as the Spendthrift Election.
Lords Halifax, Northampton, and Spencer
pitted their candidates one against the other.
The polling lasted fourteen days, and the
mansion of each of the noblemen was thrown
open to the electors. From Horton (Lord Halifax's
seat), after all the old port was drained
and claret had to be substituted, the independent
electors went over in a body to
Castle Ashby (the opposing, Lord Northampton's,
house), declaring that they would never
support a man who insulted them with sour
port. The election was eventually referred
to a scrutiny by the whole House of Commons.
This lasted six weeks; and, all that
time, sixty covers were daily laid at Spencer
House, London, for the benefit of disinterested
M.P.'s. The scrutiny ended in the numbers
being equal, and was finally decided by a
toss won by Lord Spencer; who nominated
a man then in India. The entire transaction
cost him one hundred thousand, and
the other two lords one hundred and fifty
thousand pounds each, equal to double those
amounts now. Lord Halifax—driven to
sell Horton—never recovered this inordinate expense;
and Lord Northampton, after
cutting down immense quantities of timber
and selling off some of his furniture, died in
Switzerland. "There is," we are told in a
clever paper on Northamptonshire, in a recent
number of the Quarterly Review, "a sealed
box at Castle Ashby, marked Election Papers,
which no one of the present generation haa
had the courage to open."