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