The ‘well-built’ county town and port of Dumfries, 92 miles south-east of Glasgow, was situated on the left bank of the River Nith, which separated it from Maxwelltown in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. Its population (burgh only) rose from 5,255 in 1821 to 5,883 in 1831. Its council of 25, who received a charter of confirmation in 1827, comprised 18 merchant councillors and the representatives of seven incorporated trades, all generally resident in Dumfries or Maxwelltown, the customary venue for radical mass meetings refused by the provost and magistrates of Dumfries. The annual town debt amounted to over £1,500 by 1820 and the termination of loans in 1827 and 1830 forced the council to dispose of much of its property. The district’s newspapers, the rival Whig Dumfries and Galloway Courier and Tory Dumfries Weekly Journal, were both published in the town.
The representation of the district, which had long been disputed by the Douglas, Hope and Johnstone families, had last been contested in 1806, and following the death in 1810 of the 4th duke of Queensberry (‘Old Q’) the controlling interest had passed to his coheirs the 4th duke of Buccleuch and his cousin the 6th marquess of Queensberry of Kinmount Castle (lord lieutenant of Dumfriesshire from 1819), who together controlled Annan, Dumfries and Sanquhar. Their nominee, Queensberry’s youngest brother Keith Douglas, a pro-Catholic Tory merchant and competent public speaker, sympathetic to Scottish burgh reform, had overcome local resistance to his return in 1812 and 1818; and the succession as 5th duke in 1819 of Buccleuch’s 12-year-old son, whose affairs were managed by his uncle Lord Montagu and second cousin Charles Douglas*, posed no threat to his re-election in 1820, when ‘a political economist’, writing in the Dumfries and Galloway Courier, repeatedly urged him to promote free trade.
The incorporated trades of Annan and Dumfries forwarded addresses to Joseph Hume* for presentation to Queen Caroline in October 1820 and the ‘town council of Annan’ congratulated her on the abandonment of the bill of pains and penalties the following month, which they celebrated with a grand dinner and illuminations, notwithstanding the objections of the lawyer John Little, who as provost presented their address.
The deliberations and reports of the 1818-22 select committees on Scottish burgh reform aroused great interest and although Dumfries, where in 1821 John Kerr replaced Thomas Wilson as provost, remained quiet, trade and council elections in Annan and Kirkcudbright that Michaelmas were hotly contested.
The incorporated trades of Dumfries belatedly addressed the king following the death of the duke of York, but most political activity was suspended pending Canning’s succession as prime minister in May 1827. The main local issue was the enfeoffment that month, at a cost of £144 15s., of a charter confirming the rights of the magistrates and increasing the powers of the dean of guild of Dumfries, where the council’s accounts had been found to be defective. To service the town’s debt, on 19 July 1827 the Kingholm estate was sold to John Hannah of Hannahfield for £6,300, James Black paid £800 for the northern half of Milldamhead and John Richardson £1,120 for the southern.
Greater interference by Buccleuch, the presenter of recent Dumfriesshire petitions to the Lords, was anticipated at the general election of 1830. It was preceded in the local press by a series of articles from ‘Presbyter’, explaining and disputing Douglas’s stance as a spokesman for the West India Association on slavery, manumission and the use of molasses in distilling; and in Kirkcudbright by celebrations led by the provost John Sanders Shand to mark the 6th earl of Selkirk’s coming of age.
All the burghs sent petitions for the abolition of slavery to the 1830 Parliament.
abolish the magistrates and council of the said burgh, in example to others, and in particular as the town is in bankrupt circumstances, and nothing left to support a magistracy of any description; and to empower the burgesses and free inhabitants of this burgh in every right that the magistrates and council had in time past of electing a Member to serve in Parliament, either by their property to a certain extent, or by inhabiting a house and land at a certain yearly rent, or otherwise as ... [they] judge for the good of the burgh and the welfare of the country.
LJ, lxiii. 254.
Fraser, by ‘shilly-shallying’, succeeded in postponing to 2 Dec. the Dumfries reform meeting he chaired in a packed court house. Their unanimously adopted petition was confined to reform of the Scottish burgh representation and specifically sought an end to the system ‘where self-elected councils elected delegates uncontrolled by their nominal constituents ... the inhabitants’. A reform committee, with the attorney Robert Murray as its convener, was appointed to secure their objectives. An account of the proceedings sent to Francis Jeffrey*, the new Grey ministry’s lord advocate, by Adam Rankine was publicly hailed as exemplary by the Edinburgh reformer Gibson Craig.
The ministerial reform scheme announced in March 1831 introduced a £10 franchise but left the district unchanged. Favourable petitions were adopted at short notice and forwarded from each burgh, and Dumfries, Annan, Kirkcudbright and Sanquhar also petitioned Parliament in support of the English measure and celebrated the passage of its second reading by a single vote, 22 Mar., with illuminations.
My duties in Parliament do not admit of my visiting my constituents at present. If General Sharpe and Mr. Hannay proceed with their canvass, either by addressing themselves to the corporations or to such individuals as may probably form the constituency that are [sic]to be created under the bill now before Parliament, I trust I may rely on the kindness of my friends not to cast an unfair stigma on my conduct by making any premature declaration of their sentiments against me.
NAS GD224/507/3/27; Dumfries and Galloway Courier, 22, 29 Mar. 1831; McDowall, 722.
Annan petitioned afresh in favour of the enfranchisements, disfranchisements and franchise qualifications that the English bill proposed and urged its extension to the three kingdoms, and a notice from Sharpe, 28 Mar., confirmed his candidature and commitment to the reform bills, retrenchment and abolishing ‘all monopolies’. He also claimed that he had ‘always been ready to oppose Douglas’.
Douglas chose not to vote on the amendment which wrecked the English bill, 19 Apr. 1831, precipitating a dissolution, and commenced his personal canvass as a reformer and advocate of ‘a great extension of the elective system in Scotland’ and likely supporter of an amended bill.
I have had a very busy time of it since I came here. The system of terrorism that prevails is kept up by systematic arrangement, and the democratic influence that is spreading is great beyond all bounds. The hatred of General Sharpe is universal, still there is a sulky jealousy of me, and for no better reason that that my connections in life are of that class to be a favourite mark to shoot at. I think I have ascertained today that this town are against me, whilst the inhabitants probably and privately express strong feelings of personal regard to me. The struggle is now for Lochmaben and nothing but money will carry it. I am also afraid that carrying it may make a petition, for there was an irregularity at the last election. I shall fight to the last, but my hopes of success are very doubtful.
NAS GD224/507/3/22.
Hannay had desisted and Sharpe, ably assisted by Robert Murray, had secured Annan and Dumfries, where the reform committee chaired by the merchant Robert M’Harg, and of which the merchant John Rankine, Dr. M’Cracken, M’Whirr and the editor of the Courier John M’Diarmid were prominent members, had succeeded in turning the trades council against Douglas. Responding on 9 May to his public protest, the convener of the trades James Thomson declared that they had appreciated Douglas’s ‘services not his politics’ and pointed to the inconsistency of ‘sending him to Parliament to defeat the object they’ve been contending for’.
I have pitched my tent here and I shall not move till the delegate is chosen, which is fixed for Tuesday the 17th. If I can keep my forces firm till then and can induce them to face the intimidation that is industriously circulated on every side I shall carry this burgh and secure my return. We are threatened with 4 or 500 people from Dumfries, the whole parish of Haddam, the radicals of Annan and Ecclefechan to overcome us and threatening letters and every other device are in circulation. I have taken measures to swear in 200 respectable farmers as special constables and Lord Q[ueensberry] has written to the commander-in-chief to send a troop of dragoons into the neighbourhood, so a little blood may be let, if the fever seems as high as we are threatened it may. My brother John is to be proposed as my delegate. If he is elected there will be no ground for after-alarm.
NAS GD224/507/3/18; The Times, 25 May 1831.
Crichton appointed himself the Sanquhar delegate. The Kircudbright vote was entrusted on 9 May to Provost Shand, who when challenged declared that he would ‘not vote for any candidate who will not promise to support the extension of the elective franchise to the people of Scotland, an increase in Scottish Members and separate representation for Dumfries’. On 13 May Annan council elected as delegate Sharpe’s henchman, the banker James Scott, and directed that he should travel to Dumfries with the provost John Irving in a coach and four decked in blue.
Talk of a petition against Douglas’s return evaporated, but his influence locally and in Parliament, where he remained a committed and voluble West Indian and anti-reformer, was weakened by persistent reports that his ‘future political connection with the Dumfries district must cease’.
Everything is safe at Lochmaben and I believe the Dumfries authorities are desirous to find a good opportunity of getting back into their old position. The desire which Mr. John Threshire mentions to be expressed by some parties to put forward my brother Henry has arisen from Lord Queensberry having been very diligent in giving currency to such a project; Henry, who has expressed his feelings in support of the government; and the Dumfries authorities [who] may be desirous to sustain their own consistency by some course of this sort. But, if matters remain quiet for two or three months, all that has passed will be forgotten.
NAS GD224/507/3/11.
Crichton agreed: ‘Lochmaben in quite secure, at least as much so as that place can be. Two of the opponents are turned out and two friends introduced’.
The political unionists made little headway at a great reform meeting in Dumfries, 27 Apr. 1832, when Robert Murray defended the English and Scottish bills and the £10 vote and the provost James Corson and his allies now succeeded in carrying resolutions, previously adopted by the council, for petitions to Parliament objecting to the Scottish bill’s proposals to transfer control of registration and parliamentary elections in the burghs to county officials.
The district, now dominated by Dumfries, to which Maxwelltown had been added as the boundary commissioners had advised, had 967 registered electors in December 1832: Dumfries 610; Annan 170; Sanquhar 45; Lochmaben 31; Kircudbright 111. Douglas, a staunch Conservative, was forced to stand down and in 1832 and 1835 Sharpe secured majorities of 118 and 52 over his fellow Liberal Hannay, who accused him of electoral malpractices. The constituency remained intact until after the First World War and Liberal throughout. The Conservatives, who sounded Douglas in 1839 and 1841, failed to field a candidate until 1874, and seven of the nine contests between 1832 and 1885 were between two Liberals.
Annan (1820), Lochmaben (1826), Sanquhar (1830), Dumfries (1831), all in Dumfriesshire; Kirkcudbright in the Stewartry (not the returning burgh in this period)