Albany de Grenier Fonblanque

“ So you see, when a nobleman had a ‘burgage tenure’ borough—like Old Sarum, for example, where the right of voting was in respect of the foundations of a ruined wall—he kept these tenures in his own hands, and just before the election conveyed them to his friends, or servants, who of course returned him to Parliament as their representative, and when the election was over gave back the deeds into his hands. ”

“ To you, Grace, is confided the duty of conducting the case against the prisoner, and you must instruct counsel to prosecute him. Should you have any doubt as to whom you ought to select, go and look at the list of the bar, which is stuck up outside the court, and turning to the letter D you will find ‘Davis, Charles—Mrs. Bull’seyes—No. 2, Barley Sugar Gate,’ the name and lodgings of a most promising young barrister.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Grace.
“I never do,” replied Charlie, gravely. “The foreman of the grand jury,” resumed he, “is usually the most distinguished person summoned. ”

“ The Jacks of those antique days might have had their choice of trial by battle or by ordeal,—the ordeal of fire if they were of high birth, the water ordeal if they were common people. If the former could handle hot iron without being burnt, or the latter could manage to float in deep water with their hands and feet pinioned, why then it was all right—they were ‘Not guilty.’ If battle were demanded, and, being a knight, the accused could unhorse the prosecutor, or make him cry ‘Craven’ in the lists ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jones sent her daughter with it.”
“How are the jury to know that the watch sent by Jack, was the same watch that Miss Jones pawned—or that she pawned the watch at all?”
“Oh, I shall prove all that,” said Grace. “But how?”
“Why, you stupid thing, by asking Mrs. Jones what her daughter told her when she came back.”
“Yes, but you cannot ask people what other people tell them; that is hearsay evidence and inadmissible.”
“What nonsense!”
“Indeed,” said Charley, “it is not nonsense. Every witness must speak from his own knowledge; else how is it possible to test the value of his evidence. ”

“ This last question was addressed to Charley.
“It is not usual,” he replied, “for learned counsel to ask the judge if ‘that’s right,’ but the question was a proper one. Suppose it answered. Who is your next witness?”
“Mrs. Jack.”
“You cannot call her. She is the prisoner’s wife; or, what comes to the same thing in criminal proceedings, she is ostensibly such. Our law refuses to hear the husband or wife of the accused, as a witness for or against him or her.”
“What am I to do, then!” said Grace, with a puzzled look. “Of course I must prove that Jack had the watch once.” ”

“ You have been supping upon—say salmon—and returning home have created a disturbance in the streets. You are fined five shillings and discharged. You have picked a gentleman’s pocket of his purse, containing less than five shillings, and stoutly maintain your innocence, although your hand was caught with the portemonnaie in it, in the very act of spoliation. I deal with you summarily, and you will go and pick oakum for six months. You have stolen something worth more than a crown, but plead guilty, and ask to be punished at once. I will do so, Jack. ”

“ Taunton was a pure pot-walling borough, and one of the most corrupt in the kingdom. It is only very recently that the pot-wallers there have been convinced that they are not entitled—as of right—to a sovereign a-head at every election! ”

“ To give the prisoner the opportunity of seeing the faces, as well as of hearing the names, of the men who are to try him, in order that he may object to any whom he may suppose to be prejudiced against him. If he please, he may challenge the whole number summoned by the sheriff. This is called a ‘challenge to the array;’ objections to single jurymen are called, ‘challenges to the polls.’ These latter are of two kinds—peremptory challenges, when no reason is given, and challenges for cause. ”

“ A young man glides quietly into the room, bows, and covers me loosely with a snow-white wrapper, which he fastens about my shoulders with the utmost care. The only objection that I can find to the young man, who looks like a captain in the army as represented on the stage, is his pertinacious misapplication of the letter H—otherwise, he is better than a father to me ”

“ They were, for the most part, self-elected, and when associated with the “freemen” in the enjoyment of the franchise, were naturally desirous that the number of those entitled to share with them the profits of an election should be as few as decency would permit. They contended that they alone had the right of making freemen, and they made them only by interest or compulsion. It was frequently asserted on the other hand, that all resident householders, paying scot and lot for a year and a day, were freemen, and entitled to vote at the election of members for Parliament. ”

“ And so, if a city or borough hath power to make ordinances, they cannot make an ordinance that a less number shall elect burgesses for the Parliament, than made the election before; for free elections of members of the High Court of Parliament are ‘pro bono publico,’ and not to be compared to other cases of election of mayors, bailiffs, &c., of corporations.” Hear this, Mr. Bright!
But the corporations did monopolise the franchise and make ordinances in defiance of all law, and what happened at Devizes happened to scores of other boroughs throughout the kingdom. ”

“ Anything at thy hands, gentlest of thy race! Thereupon a large tin basin on a stand is wheeled in front of me. It looks unpleasantly like what I met with at my dentist’s, but such is my state of dreamy happiness that no unpleasing association arises. ”

“ A lady who could confer a vote in a city where a contested election cost a thousand pounds a day, was not likely to die an old maid. I must add, however, that from personal observation I have come to the conclusion that my fellow-countrywomen on the banks of the Avon are no longer qualified for a renewal of this privilege in Lord John Russell’s new Reform Bill. ”

“ Nesbitt’s son afterwards sold the borough, for 15,000l., to the Earl of Darlington and Mr. Barwell, the nabob and millionnaire, who, by the way, lived to want half-a-crown, and whose four daughters received 80,000l. a-piece after his death, when his claim against Government was paid. Every freeman of Winchilsea was paid 100l. for his vote.”
“That was something like ‘bribery,’” replied Charlie. “Why, 5l, in these degenerate days, is almost as much as a man can get. Now, what is the largest sum you ever heard of, as having been given for a single vote, Mr. Minkinshaw?” ”

“ By holding up your hand, you show also that you are free in the dock; for the law of England will not allow the worst criminal to be fettered during his trial.
“The clerk of assize then continues, ‘You stand indicted by the name of John Wardleur, for that you,’ &c. &c., giving an abstract of the indictment. ‘How say you, John Wardleur, do you plead “Guilty,” or “Not Guilty?”’—not, ‘Are you guilty or not guilty?’ as some officials persist in demanding, for that is a question for the jury to decide. But whether he pleads ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty,’ is a question for the prisoner himself ”

“ On my left-hand is my secretary, and at a desk, somewhat further on, is the under-sheriff—an attorney who acts as ‘Tiney’s’ deputy, and makes a very good thing of it. It is his duty to see that judgments are put into execution. Immediately underneath me is the clerk of assize, who has prepared Jack’s indictment and taken his plea. In front of his table are the benches appropriated to attorneys, and, further on, the seats occupied by the gentlemen of the bar. ”

“ Most of these situations were sinecures, and those who held them were paid by the nation to vote for the Minister. “Freedom” was generally acquired either by birth, apprenticeship, or purchase, and the “freemen,” as a body, formed as corrupt a class as existed in the times of universal corruption.
A “pot-waller,” or “pot-wallopper,” was one who had a right to boil a pot within the borough, and if he had possessed this right for six months preceding an election, and had not been in the receipt of parochial relief, he had a vote. ”

“ I have known the girls since they wore their hair in long tails dangling down their backs, and strummed the “Battle of Prague.” Their comely mother—God bless her!—was my kind and generous comforter in a very bitter trial years and years ago, when—but never mind. ”

“ Thank your stars, Jack, that you do not live in the ‘good old times’ some people boast about. Your obstinacy would have been dealt with in a very different manner, then. A prisoner who refused to plead was sentenced to the ‘peine forte et dure,’ which was inflicted in different ways. Holinshed tells us that, in his time, the back of the criminal was pressed against a sharp stone till the pain made him plead. Other writers describe a sort of rack, which was used to conquer sulky persons, by dragging their arms and legs towards the four corners of the cell. ”

“ There was no fixed principle of voting. Hardly any two boroughs had precisely the same franchise. In one it was vested in the corporation alone—in another in the corporation and a select number of burgesses. In a third it was held by all householders. In a fourth the pot-wallers were entitled to it. The holders of burgage tenures formed the electoral body in a fifth. The freemen, including in one instance the husbands of the daughters of freemen, in a sixth. ”

“ And then, Jack, with Brown, White, & Co., is brought up into the dock to say whether he pleads ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’ to the charge.”
“But suppose he refuses to plead,” said Mabel.
“Then,” replied Charlie, “a jury will be sworn to try whether he stands ‘mute of malice,’ or ‘by the visitation of God,’ that is, if he be merely obstinately silent, or if he be incapable of answering, by reason of being deaf or dumb, or of unsound mind. If it be ascertained that he stands mute of malice, a plea of ‘not guilty’ will be entered for him, and the trial will proceed ”

“ This was, down to the year 1832, a pocket-borough of the Earls of Lonsdale. There were about sixty-seven freeholds in it altogether; forty of them belonging to the Earl, twenty to Lord Gwydir, and the remainder to independent persons. Did the Earl trust his freeholds to the Haselmere people? Not he. He knew a trick worth two of that. Seats in Parliament were worth something in those days, I can tell you. A nobleman who could command the votes of half-a-dozen members, had not to ask the minister twice for a rich sinecure for his younger son, or a bishoprick for his daughter’s husband. No! ”

“ Let us only look back far enough, and we shall find that those who are ready to assist us in the tinkering of our Constitution, have also reason to complain of the pilfering propensities of their forefathers. There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun! Universal suffrage is as old as the Saxons ”

“ I could write very learnedly, if I chose, of a time when gentlemen had their heads shaved, without any imputation on their sanity, and had other people’s hair made up into wigs, plastered up with fat, and floured all over ”

“ England is at one and the same time the most liberal and the most conservative of nations. We stretch forward one hand to grasp a reform, and grope behind our backs with the other to find a precedent. No people hugs its old customs, its ancient likes and dislikes, so closely as the English. Are we wrong, then, in supposing at this juncture, when all classes are so anxiously discussing what is to be the extent of the parliamentary franchise in the future, that a sketch of it, as it existed in the past, long before the memory of our friend Mr. ”

“ Another famous election was that of Shrewsbury, in the year 1797. It was contested between the late Lord Berwick, and Sir Richard Hill, of Hawkestone,—their brothers being the candidates. It cost them more than one hundred thousand pounds—all spent in bribery and corruption of one kind or another.
“You think, I dare say,” continued Mr. Minkinshaw, addressing Charlie, “that the proceedings of the fellows your friend there (contemptuously indicating me) was reading about just now, are new election dodges. Lord bless your innocence! they are as old as the hills. ”