give evidence. Then the petitioner tried to examine my lord’s rent-collector, to prove that the freeholders (?) had paid rent before and after the election; but his evidence was held to be inadmissible, for the same reason. No man can be called upon to disqualify his own vote, therefore none of the freeholders who voted could be witnesses. Mr. Disney was counsel for the petitioners, and jawed away sixteen to the dozen, I can tell you, but it was of no use. The committee rejected his witnesses, and the petition was dismissed.”
Mr. Minkinshaw, whose gestures throughout were, to say the least of them, lively, emphasised this triumph of corruption with a wave of his arm that sent my hat flying in Charlie’s face.
“What do you call splitting votes?” asked Charlie, dabbing his handkerchief on his excoriated nose.
“When the owner of a freehold gave a portion of it to some one, so as to enable him to vote,” replied Minkinshaw. “In a famous contest at Weymouth, not so many years ago, two hundred freeholds were split into ten thousand. Fellows were brought there on purpose to vote, and so fine was the splitting, that some of them voted in respect of the thirteen hundred and sixtieth part of a sixpenny freehold.”
“In many counties and boroughs though,” added I, “all those who paid scot and lot—that means rates and taxes, Charlie—were electors.”
You see, I did not want to let my friend think that old Minkinshaw monopolised all the information upon the subject in discussion.
“Yes! you are right—for once!” remarked Mr. Minkinshaw, with insolent condescension. “And now I’ll tell you a little history about these sort of voters. In the borough of Seaford, the franchise belonged to all inhabitant housekeepers paying scot and lot. The Duke of Richmond had chalk-pits near at hand, and he brought twenty-seven of his labourers into the borough as taxpayers, so as to make them electors. Some of them were rated as occupying houses really tenanted by widows, or revenue officers, who could not vote. One lived under a boat turned upside down; another was taxed in respect of a stable; and a third of a cottage that had been pulled down and never rebuilt. Of course, the Duke paid the rates. Well! the general election of 1790 came on eighteen days before these voters had resided there six months. Here was a fix again! But the returning officer, who was a dependent of the Duke’s, put off the poll till the eighth day after the proclamation, as he was entitled to do, and then the ministerial candidates—nominees of his Grace—made long speeches against the admissibility of every vote that was tendered against them—there were no registers of votes in those days—and got the returning officer to administer to each elector the six oaths of allegiance, abjuration, supremacy, declaration of test, residence, and bribery. Spinning it out in this way, it took one whole day to poll four votes. Thus the election was tided over the remaining eight days, and then, their term of residence being completed, the chalk-diggers were marched up in a body, their votes given and accepted, and the poll was closed—smack! That was something like corruption, sir! There is something great about a ‘dodge’ of that sort. It is true that the House of Commons declared the election void: but what of that? The charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava was not successful, sir; but it was dashing, grand, heroic—something to talk about—and so was my Lord Duke’s chalk-diggers’ dodge!”
Saying which, Mr. Minkinshaw brought down his brass-ferruled umbrella perpendicularly upon my instep, inflicting thereupon an injury, the mark of which I shall carry with me to my grave. I writhed in agony, and the exclamation “Infernal!” rose unbidden to my lips.
“Bah!” cried the Minkinshaw, still purple with excitement, “that’s nothing!”
“Really, sir, you must allow me to be the best judge of my own feelings,” said I, angrily. “You have hurt me severely.”
“Pooh! pooh! pooh!” rejoined my tormentor. “I was not talking of your foot. Why, the deuce, did you stick it in the way of my umbrella?” Then, turning to my friend, he continued, “I repeat that what I have just told you is nothing to what the returning officers of pocket-boroughs did to put down opposition. They were usually the stewards or attorneys of the patron, and acted as they pleased. Now, at Beeralston, in Cornwall, the election used to be held without any electors being present! In the year 1816 there were but two qualified voters in the borough, and these determined to oppose the candidate of the Earl of Beverley, its proprietor. The port-reeve, who was returning officer, but had no vote, set out from Plymouth, where he lived, with an attorney’s clerk, and met the voters under a great tree, where the election had been usually held. He began to read the Acts of Parliament, which at that time it was the custom to read, and one of the voters handed him a card, on which was written the names of the candidates he wished to propose. The clerk told him he was too soon. Before the reading was ended, the other voter tendered another card, when he was informed that he was too late. Then away went the port-reeve and his clerk to a neighbouring public-house and cooked up a return of the Earl’s nominees, which was not signed by a single elector!”
“But were the returning officers never called over the coals for such work as this?” inquired Charlie.
“Sometimes they were,” replied the Minkinshaw. “In 1623, the Mayor of Winchilsea, having been convicted of threatening some of the voters, and improperly excluding others from the poll, was sentenced by the House of Commons to be committed to prison, and afterwards to make submission on his knees at the bar of the House, and also in his native town before the jurats and freemen. In 1702, another mayor of the same place received the same punishment, in spite of the utmost efforts of the Government—whose tool he was—to save him. You see they had not learnt to manage these little affairs discreetly in those rough times. Later on, they contrived better. A Mr. Nesbitt was once the principal landowner in the borough just mentioned, and upon one occasion—when opposed by a nominee of the Earl