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