ELECTIONEERING.
The writ for Sloville would be out in a few days. The defeated Liberals
were winding up business in Parliament as quickly as possible, in order
at once to appeal to the country. The Tadpoles and Tapers were at their
wits’ ends for a good cry. Wentworth rushed down to Sloville, invited
the electors to hear him, advertised in the local papers, and covered the
walls with his posters. He was for the extension of the Franchise to all
men of age of sound mind, untainted by crime, and to all women who paid
rates and taxes. He advocated the separation of Church and State,
arbitration instead of war, reduction of national expenditure, a reform
of the House of Lords, free trade in land, and free secular education.
He was ready even to give Ireland as much Home Rule as he would give to
England or Scotland. At that time the great Liberal leader had not
dreamed of anything of the kind.
‘I like that,’ said the Tory candidate to his agent; ‘all the respectable
people will vote for me.’
‘Confound the fellow!’ said Sir Watkin, in a rage. ‘I shall have hard
work to beat that, and if I did the people would never believe I meant
it. I am of an old Whig family, and it is hard to give up one’s
principles.’
‘We shall have to _finesse_ a bit,’ said Sir Watkin’s agent and
confidential man. ‘Suppose you placard yourself as the working-man’s
friend.’
‘Capital!’ said Sir Watkin delightedly.
‘Suppose we send agents to break up all his meetings, so that he can’t be
heard.’
‘A capital idea!’
‘Suppose we get the Rev. George Windbag, the leading Dissenting minister
in the town, to make a grand speech at our first meeting, to talk of the
need of unity and the danger of splitting up the Liberal Party. We can
secure the man at once, Sir Watkin, if you will but ask him to dinner at
the Hall. There is not a bigger tuft-hunter in the county, and he has
immense weight with the respectable shop-keeping class.’
‘Capital!’ repeated the Baronet.
‘And suppose we get one or two Chartists from town. They will be sure to
come. Pay them well, and feed them well, and you can do anything with
them.’
‘Right you are,’ said the Baronet.
‘And we might get a Socialist or Republican down.’
‘What for?’
‘To divide the Rads.’
‘But I hate them like poison,’ said the Baronet.
‘Never mind,’ said the agent. ‘You need not appear in the matter. Leave
them to me. I know how to secure them. This ain’t the first time I’ve
been electioneering.’
‘So it seems,’ said the Baronet. ‘All I say is, keep me out of a
scrape.’
‘That is not quite so easy as it was. Yet the thing can be done;
Parliament, naturally being in favour of returning rich men to
Parliament, is never much in earnest in attempting to put down bribery
and corruption.’
‘Ah! my father had never much difficulty in securing his seat,’ said the
Baronet in a tone of regret.
‘Yes; but he spent a good deal of money, as I have heard.’
‘That was true; but he got it all back again.’
‘Yes, he had an easy life of it. I was looking over Oldmixon, and he
thus describes the borough as it was in the good old times. You
recollect the town sent two members till the Reform Bill of 1831 robbed
us of one?’
‘I have heard my father say so; but read what Oldmixon says.’
‘“SLOVILLE.—This is a large town, containing more than a thousand houses,
where the right of election is confined to a corporation of twenty-four
individuals, who elect each other. The inhabitants have no share in
choosing the members or magistrates, and as all these
corporations—possessing exclusive rights of electing Members of
Parliament—have some powerful nobleman or opulent commoner who finds it
his interest to take the lead and management of their political
influence, the election of the members is directed by this patron. The
Earl of Fee-Fum, who has a seat at Marbourne, within seven miles of the
town, and Watkin Strahan, Esq., of Elm Hall, whose residence and estate
are also in the neighbourhood, have first command of this corporation.”
At that time the number of votes, according to Oldmixon, was
twenty-four.’
‘And now there are a thousand electors on the register. It is a pity we
ever had Parliamentary reform.’
‘Sir Watkin, you are a Whig, are you not?’ said the agent.
‘Oh yes, of course I am. That was only my fun.’
‘It would not be fun if the people heard it.’
‘No, perhaps not. But we are talking privately and confidentially.’
‘Of course we are.’
‘But to business. How do matters stand?’
‘It is impossible to be better, or, rather, it would have been
impossible. I’ve been nursing the borough a long while, but now the
appearance of another Liberal candidate will give the Conservative a
chance such as he otherwise would not have had.’
‘Yes, that is pretty clear. But how can we get rid of this Wentworth?’
‘Leave that to me. We can make it pretty hot for him. Just at this time
the town is unusually full of roughs, and I know where to lay my hand on
them. Brown, the Conservative agent, told me yesterday that he could
always get a bigger lot of roughs than the Liberals. “I ain’t quite sure
of that,” said I to myself, “as I think this Mr. Wentworth will find out
before we are done with him.” Of course, he has got no money?’
‘Well, I don’t suppose he has,’ said Sir Watkin; ‘he is only a newspaper
writer. Just like the impudence of his class. They talk about the
fourth estate, and think themselves equals to Kings, Lords and Commons.
However, we are right as far as the press is concerned. We have only one
paper here, and that is ours. The proprietor is hard up. He owes me a
lot of money, and he knows on which side his bread is buttered.’
The next day Wentworth came down to hold the first public meeting, and
that same day every voter had a bill—and a good many who were not
besides—as follows:
TO THE
RADICAL AND LIBERAL ELECTORS
OF THE
BOROUGH OF SLOVILLE.
ATTEND THE
MEETING AT THE TOWN HALL,
ON THURSDAY EVENING,
At 7.45 sharp,
To prevent the Election of the Tory Candidate.
The placard was not in vain. The good seed had been sown on fruitful
soil. The chairman, an old gentleman with whom Wentworth was familiar
when he was a student, was quite unequal to the occasion, and he gave in
at the first sign of a squall.
Let me recommend all Parliamentary candidates, when there is a contested
election, to be very particular as to their chairman. An immense deal
depends upon him. He ought to have a personal knowledge of all the
individuals in the meeting, and an imperturbable good nature. He ought
to have an enthusiastic prepossession in favour of his candidate. He
ought to have a voice that could be heard above the roaring of any storm.
He should have an intuitive faculty at feeling the pulse of the meeting.
He should be a master of making an adversary look ridiculous. He should
have the physical power to sit out any time in the midst of any row, no
matter how noisy the crowd, and how heated the atmosphere. His tact
should be great. He should have immense personal influence in the place.
Above all, he should never lose his temper or have recourse to threats,
unless he has an overwhelming majority on his side.
When Wentworth appeared upon the scene he saw at a glance that his
enemies were far more numerous than his friends. His chairman, for
instance, had taken no trouble about the meeting. He had not even
brought a friend with him, and he and Wentworth had the platform almost
entirely to themselves. This was an initial mistake. Learn of me, O
candidate, and never attend a public meeting unless you can fill the
platform with out-and-out adherents; men who will applaud in season and
out; men whose solid front will impose on the ignorant and thoughtless;
men whose countenances will express the utmost rapture at your stalest
jokes or feeblest witticisms, who will seem absorbed and riveted by your
dreariest display of statistics, and who will cheer the louder the more
you stumble and get confused. Canning understood how useful aid of that
sort was to a speaker when he wrote:
‘Cheer him when his audience flag,
Brother Riley, Brother Bragg;
Cheer him when he hobbles vilely,
Brother Bragg and Brother Riley.’
Again, another secret in the way of successful public meetings is to have
beside the chairman, and in front of the audience, a jolly looking fellow
always ready to laugh. We English are an imitative people. One laugher
on the platform will make many laugh below. Laughter is contagious. One
man laughs because he sees another doing so, and in nine cases out of ten
at a public meeting if you ask him he can give no better reason. Ladies
are all very well in front, if the meeting is harmonious, and they are
well dressed and good-looking; but if they are well bred they do not roar
out, and if they clap their hands it is in such a graceful feminine
manner as to produce no effect like your red-faced jolly fellow, always
ready with the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind.
A few Radicals, delighted at Mr. Wentworth’s programme, were in the hall
at the far end. Unfortunately between them and the platform were the
enemy, who had rallied round in consequence of the lying hand-bill, and
they were led by a full-necked gamekeeper, who roared like a bull of
Bashan all the time Mr. Wentworth was speaking, or rather, attempting to
speak. Sir Watkin Strahan’s agent was also present, to watch with
complacency the result of his trick. The roughs had an idea that the
more noise they made the better, and their number was increased by some
of the Free and Independent, who had met the Gent from London, as they
termed him, at the railway station, and who had been immensely disgusted,
that in reply to their hints as to his ordering a supply of beer, he had
intimated that so far as he could judge they had had enough already.
That was adding insult to injury, and they resented it accordingly.
At all times the Free and Independent are a thirsty race, particularly at
election times. In every beer-shop in the borough Wentworth had thus
raised up a host of enemies. In many a borough the election has been
fought and won by beer alone; there is no other product of man’s
industry, unfortunately, such a power, and the publican is not such a
fool as he looks.
‘Who do you vote for?’ said I to one of them at the time of an election
contest.
‘For them as I gets the most by,’ was his reply.
Frightened at the aspect of affairs, the aged chairman, with a feeble,
trembling voice, told his fellow-townsmen that he had the pleasure of
introducing to them Mr. Wentworth, a clever journalist from London, whom
some of them knew when he was formerly a preacher in that town, and whom
he hoped they would listen to that evening with all the respect and
attention the occasion demanded. It was with difficulty and not a little
interruption that the chairman could say as much, and then he collapsed,
wishing that he had stayed at home in the bosom of his family. The
London candidate then came forward, to be assailed with a howl of
derision from his foes closely packed in the front, while but a faint
cheer from the far end was now and then perceptible as the roar was
slightly lulled.
‘Gentlemen, pray give Mr. Wentworth a fair hearing,’ cried the chairman,
and again the storm grew and the confusion increased. ‘Order! order!’
said the chairman, screaming at the top of his voice. He might just as
well have spoken to the winds or waves. Then he grew angry and began to
threaten, and that only made matters worse. Wentworth, erect as a statue
and with folded arms, calmly surveyed the scene. It was not a pleasant
sight; it suggests to one the truth of the Darwinian origin of the human
race. In a crowd men act like monkeys. I remember as a boy sneaking
into an election crowd and calling a decent, respectable, white-haired
old baronet, who had been the Tory representative of the county for a
quarter of a century, and whom every decent body respected, the old
Benacre Bull (Benacre being the name of the village in which he lived);
and everyone repeated the nickname till the old gentleman had to stop
speaking, and I have been ashamed of the thing ever since. Had the
individual members of that howling mob met the Baronet in the street as
he rode by on his favourite chestnut mare, there was not one of them but
would have treated him with every appearance of courtesy and respect.
There is something very cowardly in an election mob.
Long did the storm roar and rage as Wentworth stood up, the true friend
and earnest champion of his rough and unmannerly audience. The chairman
in vain appealed for fair play. That was the last thing to be expected
at such a time; in vain he addressed them as gentlemen, or friends, or
electors, still the storm raged. However, Wentworth was not a man to be
put down, and he resolutely maintained his ground.
‘I am come,’ he said, ‘to put you on your guard, to ask you not to be led
away by clap-trap, to tell you that all my life I have been fighting on
behalf of the people, to lift up my voice on behalf of Peace,
Retrenchment and Reform. You have a serious duty to discharge: to send a
member to Parliament to help the good old cause of liberty and freedom
and human progress.’ Again his voice was lost in an uproar. ‘You have,’
he continued, ‘rights to be won, a victory to achieve.’ Again there was
an uproar. ‘You have three candidates before you, one of them a Tory.
What, I ask, have Tories done for you and yours?’—more insane clamour.
‘You know better than I do, they are not the friends but the foes of the
people, that it is only as you have triumphed over them that you have
become free, that the history of Toryism is a record of resistance to
popular rights—’ ‘And precious freedom,’ said a socialist, who darted up
from the mob, amidst cheers on every side. ‘You Liberals give us liberty
to work and slave and starve. What with the landlords who have robbed us
of the land which belongs to the people, and what with the millowners who
grind us in their mills, and your priests who make earth a hell, and then
bid us think of a better land, what have we to thank our leaders, be they
Whig, Tory or Radical, for? We are nothing to society, whose laws are
framed for the purpose of securing the wealth of the world to the
haristocrat or the rich snob, thereby depriving the larger portion of
manhood of its rights and chances.’
This was a new doctrine for Sloville, and it was resented accordingly,
and the socialist orator was pulled and hustled out of the hall, amidst
increasing cries of order and police. The poor frightened chairman
bolted out of the chair, much to the delight of the Tory roughs, and then
one of the biggest of them moved a resolution to the effect that Mr.
Wentworth was not a fit and proper person to represent the borough, and
that he be requested to retire, and without calling for a show of hands,
or putting the contrary, declared the resolution carried. At length Mr.
Wentworth succeeded in getting him to do so, and the motion was lost.
However, it was felt to be a farce to attempt to do any sane business
that night, and Mr. Wentworth, as he left the hall, was heard loudly
asserting that they would hear from him again, whilst from the far end of
the hall there came many who claimed to be his supporters, and who
assured him that he had but to continue his meetings and he would be sure
to win.
He knew better, he knew that the chief agent in elections was money, that
the candidate with longest purse generally wins, and money he was not
prepared to spend. So it has ever been, and so it will according to
present appearances ever be, and must be so, till paid canvassing be put
down by Act of Parliament, and election agents’ fees reduced. There is
little likelihood of Parliament doing that. Wealthy men like to get into
the House, it confers upon them prestige, a seat in Parliament helps the
lawyer to a place, a seat in Parliament gives a naval or a military
officer another chance of dipping his hand in John Bull’s purse, or it
enables a wealthy ignoramus who has managed either by the blessing of God
upon his labours, or with the aid of the devil, to become a millionaire,
to obtain admission for his sons and daughters into circles in which they
would otherwise have no claim. Everybody who is a somebody is anxious to
see only men of wealth in Parliament. You may call it the people’s House
if you will, it is only the House of the rich people after all. Now and
then one of the people finds his way there as a working man, but he is
the exception, not the rule, and too often is but the paid agent of the
rich man who defrays his expenses, and expects him, with all his show of
independence, to support the party, right or wrong. Nor is he much more
independent if he is paid by the working men themselves.
‘What impudence! Serve the fellow right,’ said Sir Watkin Strahan, the
swell Liberal candidate, as he talked over the matter with his brother
swell, the Tory candidate, in the club-room of Sloville next day. ‘What
impudence for a London newspaper man to come down here and upset the
town! Things have come to a pretty pass, when such fellows are permitted
to interfere into our local matters. At any rate, we may agree to get
rid of him as a common enemy.’
And for that purpose they entered into an alliance offensive and
defensive. Sloville was to be made too hot for Mr. Wentworth—that was
understood in every public-house; there was no need to hint any more.
Once upon a time Sir Godfrey Kneller overheard a British working man
devoting, as was the wont of British workmen in his day (they don’t do it
now, they know better), the various members of his body to perdition.
The courtly painter was shocked and scandalized. ‘What!’ said he, ‘do
you think that God Almighty will take the trouble to damn a poor wretch
like you? The idea is absurd; it is lords and fine gentlemen he will
damn, I assure you.’
So it has been with the British public in the choice of a member of
Parliament. It is only lords and fine gentlemen, or at any rate rich
ones, who have been held to be worthy of being sent by the people to the
House of the people. A time will come when the electors will think
differently; when they will feel that a newspaper man is more likely to
serve them faithfully; more likely to decide rightly in political
matters; more likely to study the best interests of the nation than a
fine gentleman, who thinks politics a bore, and who only consents to
fight the battle of party on the understanding that, whether he wins or
loses, he shall not go without his reward.