Successive waves of industrial and commercial expansion, associated with West Indian slavery and the development of the corporation-owned docks, which sustained international, Irish and coastal trades, had made Liverpool, on the eastern shore of the Mersey, the premier entrepôt and canal terminus of the North-West, the second largest town and port in the country and an important cultural centre.
Power was vested locally in the mayor and two bailiffs (the returning officers), elected annually on 18 Oct. by the freemen (eight to ten per cent of the adult male population), whose main privilege was exemption from town (port) dues, and a self-elected common council of 40. The latter, a closely interrelated and predominantly Tory body, included members of Liverpool’s three long-established political groups: the Blue or Townside party of the Tory Foster, Case and Aspinall families; the Greens, headed hitherto by the Drinkwater, Hollinshead and Bourne families, whose Whiggism was in abeyance; and the Pink or reforming faction, led by the Croppers, Curries, Earles and Lawrences, whose sympathies were Whig, Nonconformist and Quaker.
In the contest of 1812, the anti-Catholic Isaac Gascoyne, the Townside and corporation Member since 1796, and the pro-Catholic Canning, newly proposed by a coalition of disaffected Greens and wealthy ship owners excluded from the corporation led by the Tory John Bolton of Storrs, Westmorland, and the ‘quondam Whig’ John Gladstone, had defeated the Whigs Henry Brougham* and Thomas Creevey*. This split the independent party and heralded changes in the organization of Liverpool politics, which initially favoured the Reds or Canningites. Resident Red freemen were managed at and between elections through the Backbone Club and the Canning Club established in 1812 by Gladstone and the brewer James Ackers of Knotty Ash, while a separate dining club, the Canning Cycle, catered for their organizing elite. The Blues operated through the Pitt Club (1814) and the True Blue Club (1818), founded by the struggling banker James Aspinall in the corporation and Gascoyne interests. The Concentric Society (1812) and the Independent Debating Society (1813) provided a forum for the Whig Dissenters, and the pro-reform, pro-emancipation Liverpool Freemen’s Club (1812), managed by the auctioneer Thomas Green, rallied the Pink and Green ‘foes of corruption’.
Failure to unseat Canning, following his appointment as president of the India board in Lord Liverpool’s administration in 1816 and at the 1818 election, had made Gascoyne the more vulnerable to an anticipated challenge by Sefton or his son Lord Molyneux† at the general election of 1820.
Gascoyne commenced his personal canvass directly George IV was proclaimed with trade processions and civic splendour, 12 Feb. 1820. Canning’s candidature was confirmed that day, and his supporters secured a 900-signature requisition and subscription for his return, 18 Feb.
On the hustings, 8 Mar., Canning was nominated by Bolton, whose Duke Street mansion served as his election headquarters (his nickname as a militia colonel, ‘Rub-a-Dub-Fire Away’, proved popular with squib writers). The broker Henry Blundell Hollinshead seconded. Aspinall and his elder brother Bamber Gascoyne’s local agent John Shaw Leigh, the secretary of the True Blue Club, nominated Gascoyne. Crompton’s proposers were Williams (whom he afterwards nominated for the county) and the broker Robert Ellison Harvey; while Leyland’s were the hatter and treasurer of the Pink and Greens John Harvey and the stationer and future barrister Edward ‘Roaring’ Rushton.
perhaps more brilliant than any former, though I was heartily tired of it, before it was over, and am heartily sick of the thing. But I must do the Liverpuddlians justice. They are reasonable enough ... I am assured indeed that they would return me again [in the event of a by-election] without a campaign, and quite willing and without a difficulty if I would send Willy to represent me. This is certainly a point gained.
Harewood mss 26, Canning to wife, 6 Apr. 1820.
According to John Gore, the printer of the Liverpool Advertiser’s analysis of the pollbook, 2,032 (94 per cent) of the 2,162 voters were residents. Overall, 679 (31 per cent) plumped (Canning 319, Gascoyne 182, Crompton 140, Leyland 38); and the 1,483 (69 per cent) who split their votes gave Gascoyne 1,350, Canning 1,316, Crompton 205 and Leyland 87 (88, 80, 59 and 70 per cent of their respective totals). Of 130 non-residents polled, mostly from nearby Lancashire, Cheshire and Wrexham, 98 (75 per cent) voted Canning-Gascoyne, mainly (79) from Gascoyne’s booth; a further 12 plumped for Gascoyne and nine for Canning. As the absent Gladstone crossly remarked, Gore’s statistics confirmed the importance of the corporation-Canningite coalition, which their party leaders publicly denied.
Early in the new Parliament, government sanctioned the passage of the 1820 bonded rums bill, indemnifying Ewart, Rutson and Company, one of the businesses of William Ewart (d. 1823) of Mossley Hill, who contributed some £3,500 towards Canning’s election, from liability for duty on stock destroyed in a warehouse blaze.
From June 1821, the Liverpool Mercury orchestrated a campaign to oust Canning should he seek re-election on returning to office.
All our party would be united against Lord M[olyneux], whilst probably a portion of the moderate Whigs would either support or not oppose me. If Mr. Bolton and you think it right to go forward, I think it would be very desirable for you to ascertain the sentiments or opinions of such men as James Cropper, Thomas Booth, Mr. [Arthur] Heywood, Thomas Fletcher, Ashton Yates, Charles Lawrence, S. Richards, Benjamin Heywood*, Joseph Sandars, Thomas Francis, William Earle sen. and jun. and a few more of that description. It would also be of consequence to feel the pulse of some of General Gascoyne’s friends, also Joseph Leigh, etc. ... [Jonathan] Blundell Hollinshead, etc. ... Then there is another class such as Ackers, Stewart, Kaye, Radcliffe, Dempsey, Haigh ... The object I think is not so much for opinions as to the probability of success or otherwise, but whether they will give the thing a fair trial by attending a public meeting when called and agree to follow it up, if there should then appear good grounds for doing so, but on no account otherwise. As to Sir Wm. B[arton], and Sir J[ohn] T[obin], they are both much connected with Leyland, therefore you and Mr. Bolton can better judge whether any thing and what ought to be said to them ... Irlam, I should think, would wish me well, though he would naturally take Sir Wm.’s course ... I dare say my brothers or partners, or both, would willingly assist, but I much doubt the prudence of permitting them in this stage. This leads me to speak of the expense. If it is expected that I should pay money, I must at once decline being a candidate, if I cannot be returned as Members for Liverpool have always been. I will not be an exception. My family I dare say would subscribe liberally, their means considered, perhaps among them £1,000 or £1,200 ... As to myself, I must vacate my present seat before I can go to a poll. To obtain another elsewhere in case of defeat at Liverpool would unavoidably be attended with a large expense, besides, locally connected as I am with the town, my annual expenditure as their Member would unavoidably be of some moment. For I think I should, in that case, adopt a different course from any that have gone before ... Hitherto Liverpool has followed a course different from all other great commercial towns: London, Bristol, Glasgow, Newcastle, etc. select their representatives from their own community - if a change is thought desirable, there is ample precedent to justify it. Be that as it may, the time is now come when a decision must be made one way or the other.
Glynne-Gladstone mss 105, W. Ewart sen. to J. Gladstone, 26 Feb., reply 2 Mar. 1822.
After sounding opinion in London, Bath and Liverpool, Ewart concluded that Gladstone’s ‘free of charge’ stipulation, the hostility of Gascoyne’s supporters and the loss of spontaneity caused by the deferral (until July 1822) of Canning’s appointment augured against the attempt.
Canning, as he had intended since 1814, pressed the candidature of his financial coadjutor Huskisson, but his faltering bid for ministerial promotion raised the spectre of a second by-election that Parliament, which the Liverpool merchants refused to finance. To gain time, Canning stifled a requisition to Huskisson in June 1822 and informed the prime minister that he would not vacate until the last possible moment, so obviating the need for a writ before 1823.
arrive privately at Mr. Bolton’s on Monday [10 Feb.] between 12 and one, so as to make a few calls and then go to the Exchange; after dinner to visit the Canning and two or three other principal clubs; on Tuesday to make more calls (bring plenty of cards with you) and visit more of the principal clubs in the evening; on Wednesday morning a procession from Mr. Bolton’s to the hustings.
Harewood mss 83, J. Gladstone to Canning, 21, 28 Jan.; Add. 38744, ff. 60-84, 107-16; Glynne-Gladstone mss 275, Huskisson to J. Gladstone, 29 Jan. 1822; 1201; Huskisson Pprs. 160.
With a two-day postponement, the arrangements were broadly adhered to. Shepherd had no cause to execute his threat to ‘bring out Leyland’ should ‘the Lascar’ [Gladstone] stand and, as agreed at the Concentric Club’s tenth (and last) anniversary dinner, 23 Dec. 1822, the Liverpool Mercury promoted and the radical Whigs nominated Molyneux, who was staying nearby, in absentia, holding Crompton, whose invitation to Colonel Jones was rejected, in reserve. The town was placarded with scurrilous bills ‘signed’ by ‘Canning’s old antagonists’ Harvey, Shepherd and Williams, which capitalized on Huskisson’s unusual French upbringing and brief involvement with the Jacobin ‘Club de 1789’ by erroneously pronouncing him disqualified from standing as an alien, a bastard and a placeman.
spoke admirably, delighted and surprised his friends, and won the admiration and good will of his opponents. His speech [a refutation of the placarded allegations and defence of Canning’s foreign policy] will be of the greatest use to him here, and will not be useless to him ... in London. Crompton was tedious and ridiculous; Rushton, who proposed Lord Molyneux, clever and fair. Williams did not dare to come. Shepherd pleaded gout as his excuse for not attending.
Harewood mss 84; Huskisson Speeches (1831 edn.), iii. 647-72.
The Whig merchants complained privately that Huskisson’s advocacy of liberal commercial policies would destroy their party locally. They failed to rally to Molyneux, although Sefton (an arch opponent with Lords Derby, Stafford and Wilton of the proposed Liverpool-Manchester railway) had approved his candidature. The election, ‘which for shortness of duration and good humour is unparalleled in the records of Liverpool politics’ (Backhouse), terminated after a nominal two-day poll, described by the Liverpool Mercury as a protest ‘on public grounds, by half a dozen spirited men’.
The Molyneux estate bill received royal assent, 2 May, and the 1823 merchant vessels apprentices’ bill (4 Geo. IV, c. 25) and reform of the law of principal and factor (4 Geo. IV, c. 83) were ostensibly enacted at the behest of Liverpool mercantile interests, supported by Bristol, Dublin and London.
Petitions for remission of the window tax on warehouses and business premises (1823, 1825, 1830) and lower cotton duties were invariably bipartisan.
Despite Liverpool’s large Irish population, Orange Lodges, sectarian schools and local branch of the Catholic Association (established in 1824 and dissolved in February 1829), petitioning on Catholic relief was muted. Its English Catholic hierarchy were uneasy about Irish migration and sectarianism.
Both Members sought re-election in 1826 and were requisitioned in May, when reports of opposition were rife.
Amendments to recent dockyard, canal, railway and waterworks Acts, introduced with corporation backing in November 1826, were enacted without serious opposition, and both Members supported the 1828 Liverpool blind school bill, to which William Dixon organized opposition in the Lords on behalf of the trustees. Legislation passed that Parliament to safeguard shipping, increase church provision by redrawing parish boundaries and vesting new endowments in the corporation and inhabitants, and to improve communications and commerce with Ireland.
Negotiations to secure Huskisson’s re-election in the event of a cabinet reshuffle had foundered in May 1827.
The 1828 Liverpool elections bill, which foundered amid hostile petitioning by the freemen, 14 Mar., was a bipartisan attempt to prevent a repetition of the electoral corruption of 1827. Promoted by the corporation and introduced by Gascoyne, 12 Feb., it proposed shortening municipal and parliamentary polls by providing additional booths, introducing a qualifying period between admission and eligibility to vote and measures against impersonation.
If we were not intimately connected with the machinery by which the General’s election for Liverpool is usually secured, we should express our astonishment that ... [Liverpool] should chose ... a person of the gallant General’s mental dimensions ... Any club of artisans, connected with Liverpool, could furnish a dozen men more capable of sustaining the intellectual character of the town than this, our oldest representative.
Liverpool Chron. 21 June; Albion, 23 June 1828.
The Tories and the corporation fêted Peel as a possible candidate-in-waiting at the town hall, 7 Oct. 1828.
On 7 Jan. 1829 the common council rejected (by 25-9) London’s plea for a subscription for Spanish and Italian refugees, and divisions were evident that month on the Wallasey embankment bill, the labourers’ wages bill and petitions against suttee and for colonization and free trade with India and China, adopted in the wake of the Calcutta printer James Silk Buckingham’s† lectures.
Amid signs of an economic downturn in 1829 and 1830, the boot and shoemakers petitioned for protection, 7 May, the bankers and tradesmen for changes in the laws governing small debts, and the Brazil and River Plate Association for a reduction in butlerage, 25 May 1829.
Both Members sought re-election and issued addresses directly the king’s death was announced, 28 June 1830. Gascoyne’s votes against religious liberty were criticized in handbills and in the Whig press; but, with his likely opponent Brougham, against whom Wellington considered putting up Sir Henry Hardinge* with a heavy purse, destined for Yorkshire, Leigh confidently informed Salisbury on 9 July that ‘no serious opposition ... yet threatens the General ... nor do I anticipate ... any will arise except among the lower order of freemen for the sake of a little free drink, which we shall all be most happy to admit to be a very reasonable composition for success’.
some accidental splitting for Col. Williams’s bar and our being deprived of our tally at the last round by the sudden closing of the poll ... Your friends ... preferred to submit to the wishes of the returning officers in terminating the election at once, although they had three full tallies at the bar.
Add. 38758, f. 220.
Leigh advised Salisbury, 5 Aug. 1830, that ‘with an equal purse I am satisfied that the General’s party is the strongest of any in the town’.
The railway opening, 15 Sept., and attendant civic dinners in Manchester and Liverpool, where, as Salisbury’s guest, Wellington would take up the freedom, were national events and Huskisson’s attendance was politically vital despite his continued debility.
Peel should be glad of it, but I hope and trust he will be scouted, though I fear there are many disposed to press him upon us. Your name has been mentioned by those who are your friends and have always been so. Young Stanley is thought of by others and he would be glad of it, but then his grandfather’s life is not worth more than a year or two, and he would go to the county. Charles Grant*, Kirkman Finlay*, William Ewart, Sir Stratford Canning are all in people’s mouths, but we must all use the utmost exertions against any man who will not support the West Indies and surely that interest is strong enough to succeed here.
Glynne-Gladstone mss 243.
The Whigs regretted the unavailability of Brougham and Lord John Russell* and predicted until the last that Gladstone would offer on the hustings. They speculated with some justification that Peel’s prospects were blighted ‘by association’ with the ‘Ultra Tories (Bold, the Bournes, Holmes, Irlam, Lambert, Potter, Porter, Shand, Sandbach, Thomas Tobin and Henry Wilson, etc.)’ who had first requisitioned him. They predicted that Ewart, who had declared on 18 Sept. as a Huskissonite and local candidate connected with Canning, would ‘vex Peel "expensively" but not beat him’, and that Bolton’s choice, Lady Canning’s nephew, the duke of Portland’s son-in-law Denison, a schoolfellow and political ally of Ewart and Smith Stanley, would run Peel closer.
I do not know what we are to do to give Ewart such support as we can in the event of his coming to the poll. He is not quite the candidate we should have wished for, and I hope if Denison stands he will not. I think my chance is out: for I should not think of a contest in any case, and if Peel accepts, this is certain.
Brougham mss, Smith Stanley to Brougham, 2 Oct.; Derby mss Der (14) 116/1, Brougham to Smith Stanley [two letters, n.d.]; 116/6, Winstanley to Smith Stanley, 28 Nov. 1830.
Talk of William Sturges Bourne* and of Wilmot Horton, who resented being overlooked, evaporated, and Lord Palmerston* and Charles Poulett Thomson* were mentioned as ‘Huskisson’s heir’ when Bolton’s hopes of ‘smuggling in’ Denison unopposed were dashed.
There is a most curious scene going on in Liverpool. The Ewart family are singly (as to purse) fighting the whole oligarchy ... of which their late father was a member. They have the populace and almost every one of the liberals with them. But every vote of the operatives ... is bought on both sides. Prices at the opening £5 per man, which today range from £10 to £15. By an accident similar to what happened to you, Ewart lost 12 the first day; but has gone neck and neck with the oligarchs since 3,888 are already polled; so I suppose the tug of war will be on Monday. Where Denison gets his money I do not know; but on Wednesday John Bolton had bled to the tune of £3,000. A confidential friend of mine has the custody of a lot of our Manchester voters who came by railroad accompanied by their wives. He told me that males and females got so drunk that he and three others of our staff were forced to put them to bed; and found both sexes so bothered that they could not distinguish the lawful pairs and packed them to the best of their judgement. Boccaccio would have made a chapter of this for the De Camerone. The Lascar attended the nomination. Capt. Colquitt ... was appointed to draw the badger and to worry him. But when provoked ... he actually slunk from front to rear, sneaked from the hustings and fled to Leamington, the object of general exeats.
Brougham mss, Shepherd to Brougham, 27 Nov. 1830.
Denison, who pressed to be appointed vice-president of the board of trade ‘immediately’ to boost his prospects, was mentioned as secretary at war and secretary to the India board during the poll. He maintained his 12-vote lead for six days, but, polled out, he was overtaken and conceded defeat by 29 votes on the seventh.
Both sides conceded bad votes, drew parallels with East Retford and Evesham and surmised that although the case for reform was strengthened, the result augured badly for the enfranchisement of large towns and put Liverpool at risk of disfranchisement.
George Grant and Gladstone’s attorney Richard Radcliffe organized petitions against Ewart’s return.
that if any one freeman was to give notice to you and the freemen assembled at the hustings during the election, that in the event of your being returned, he would petition against you, on the grounds of bribery and treating practices at the last election, that he would be entitled to do so now, as Ewart was unseated solely on that ground, for it was not proved that he had been a party to it.
Ibid. 103, J. Gladstone to Denison, 3 Apr. 1831.
The second petition, presented on 20 Dec., was from the ‘liberal’ attorney Peter Rigby Wason*, who was mocked in Liverpool, where the Chronicle backed him, as Gladstone’s self-serving ‘tool’. Alleging bribery, it echoed Wason’s open letter to the corporation urging local electoral reform and requested that no new writ be issued without a full inquiry. Its presenter George Robinson heralded it as ‘remedial’ and caused a furore by maintaining (erroneously) that Ewart proposed taking the Chiltern Hundreds before the first petition was heard to prevent the exposure of corruption at Liverpool.
J. Benett means first to apply for a bill of indemnity, and then to establish bribery by evidence against whole bodies of men, and upon that evidence to disfranchise all the corrupt freemen by a distinct bill ... In the meantime certainly no writ will issue, as Lord Chandos had intended to take up the case if Benett had not, and he and his party will insist on the prosecution of the inquiry.
Glynne-Gladstone mss 103, Denison to J. Gladstone, 12 Mar. 1831.
Benett carried the writ’s suspension, 29 Mar., 15, 21 Apr. 1831, when, with the dissolution imminent, he withdrew a resolution ‘that the system of corruption and treating which has prevailed at the elections of burgesses to serve in Parliament for the borough of Liverpool, deserves the attention of the House’, substituted another confirming the committee’s finding that ‘gross bribery and treating prevailed during the last election’, and carried it (164-142) despite ministerial opposition.
The merchants scrutinized the Members’ conduct on slavery and East and West Indian issues with renewed vigilance. They dismissed Gascoyne, who called for and was conceded a place on the East India committee (6 Feb. 1831), as a ‘Goose’ and criticized Ewart’s inexperience.
Reformers and anti-reformers cited the 1830 by-election and quoted selectively from Canning and Huskisson’s speeches to promote their cause. The ratepayers sent petitions to both Houses expressing support for Grey’s administration, an extended franchise, voting by districts, triennial parliaments, short polls and the ballot, 26, 28 Feb. 1831, but neither the Members nor the petition’s Commons presenter Lord Stanley endorsed the last plea, which Rushton had controversially rushed through at the meeting, 14 Dec. 1830.
Both sides speculated that they could return two Members at the ensuing general election. Ewart, who declared as a supporter of the bill, 23 Apr., was ‘rapturously received on the Exchange’, 25 Apr., and approved at a public meeting convened to thank the king for dissolving Parliament, 27 Apr. With the political unionists supportive, notwithstanding the omission from the bill of the ballot and shorter parliaments, and an eye to assisting Ewart and ousting Wilson Patten, a reform committee was named that day and a delegation dispatched to London to vet candidates. Currie and James Brancker, chairman of the committee appointed on 31 Mar. ‘to restore Ewart’, rallied supporters at the King’s Arms, 28 Apr. Charles Shand summoned ‘Denison’s friends’, who on 26 and 27 Apr. resolved to nominate him notwithstanding his decision to contest Nottinghamshire. The anti-reformers, who claimed to have secured 1,400 votes for Gascoyne and ‘any person he may bring along with him’, bandied about Peel’s name, approached Lord Francis Leveson Gower* and feted their supporters at a meeting chaired by Richard Leyland at the Golden Lion, 29 Apr.
Of the 4,860 votes which we have, 4,500 are ascertained to be [by] venal scoundrels, and all the clubs are indignant at the bill, which, they say, robs their children of their bread. Gascoyne is the god of their idolatry, and he is unshakeable. Nor will he want funds, though he has merely a handful of friends among the broadcloth. For Leyland the banker will spend thousands for him; and his private supporters are the best electioneers in the town. He is despised and detested by our people of education; and some of them may write to you that he is easily to be gotten rid of. But I am more experienced ... Lord Stanley proposed a coalition between Denison and Ewart. The proposal was deliberated upon in our privy council; and we were unanimously of opinion that it would be unavailing ... Gascoyne’s leading friends yesterday did not mean to concur in inviting another Tory candidate ... There are, however, two dangers; namely the inexperienced praters ... nominating a second Whig candidate, which is our greatest peril; and the arrival of Lord Gower or someone else to stand on the Tory interest, with whom the Gascoyneites must of course unite themselves.
Glynne-Gladstone mss 198, T. to J. Gladstone, 3 May; Manchester Herald, 4 May; Brougham mss, Shepherd to Brougham [1831].
On 2 May the reformers were out in force and Gascoyne, whose death had been deliberately misreported the previous day, was hissed as he walked to the hustings with his sponsors Leyland and Bourne.
We, Ewart’s committee, found it safe to enter into a cordial union with the remainder (split Denison party) who were headed by Rushton, in whom we could confide. The resorting to booths and doing away the tally system finished the discomfiture of the General, who had no time to resort to tactics and tricks and was at once overwhelmed by the votes which were brought up rapidly by the three committees who were united against him. Upon the new plan the burgess was not delayed. He walked up to his letter and standing alone on a step gave his suffrage without anyone save the returning officers and a friend of each candidate knowing for whom he gave it ... I understand that the tallow chandlers have put their brother shopkeepers up to an illumination. The language of these is we work for reform and not for individuals: but with the gentry Denison’s name is a tower of strength.
Brougham mss, Brougham to Shepherd and reply [May]; Glynne-Gladstone mss 244, Grant to J. Gladstone, 2 May 1831.
Denison’s refusal, announced on 6 May 1831, fuelled speculation that the president of the board of trade Charles Grant, the India board secretary Thomas Hyde Villiers*, for whom Shepherd ‘prepared the ground’, Molyneux, the foreign secretary Palmerston, the Irish secretary Smith Stanley or Silk Buckingham would stand at the ensuing by-election.
He is certainly in a curious and, I should think, in an uneasy situation. Mr. Earle and Mr. Lawrence, his chairman and vice-chairman, are certainly Whigs though feeble ones; but his committee consists of thorough paced Tories, haters of ministers and the bill ... Each party is confident of success. It is the aristocracy against the commonalty, the merchants against the shopkeepers.
Brougham mss, Shepherd to Brougham, 12 June 1831.
Reports that Gascoyne would ‘fight a hard battle’ or ‘prevent a new election till next year ... by petitioning’ created unease, but, convinced that Sandon was ‘no Whig’ and the General’s chances slim, his supporters joined ‘Canning’s and part of the Whigs’ in endorsing Sandon, who informed Grey, 3 July:
It is the battle of a churchman against a Unitarian, of an aristocrat against a plebeian, of a stranger, connected through you with Pitt and Lord Liverpool, and through myself as well as you in some degree with Canning and Huskisson, against a second rate merchant of fair abilities and good character, and popular among his brother merchants by being a merchant in a particular trade, and among the lower freemen by his Yankee connections ... The sting of popular opposition is drawn by my being a reformer, as well as my opponent; and the Tories are willing to have me in their despair because I have refused to pledge myself to the ‘whole bill’.
Hatherton mss, Palmerston to Littleton, 14 May; Hatfield House mss bdle. 4, Leigh to Salisbury, 28 May; Add. 51836, Stanley to Holland, 8 June; The Times, 10 June; Brougham mss, Shepherd to Brougham, 21 June; Harrowby mss, Sandon to Grey, 3 July 1831.
As Wason, Benett and the anti-reformers intended, delays to the by-election writ, justified by Charles Williams Wynn on procedural grounds, and the revival of the franchise bill, which proposed the disfranchisement of 2,661 freemen guilty of receiving bribes in November 1830, ensured that bribery and corruption at Liverpool remained a major issue in 1831-2.
Reform meetings and a mayoral contest presaged the final stage of the by-election canvass. As agreed at a select meeting at the Clarendon Rooms, 10 Oct. 1831, the Clayton Square meeting chaired by Molyneux, 12 Oct., voted addresses to the king and Grey urging peerage creations to carry the bill and appointed a 40-strong ‘standing committee on reform’, drawn almost exclusively from Ewart and Thornely’s election committees.
The fact ... is that our corrupt freemen had recovered from their panic on the withdrawing of Benett’s bill, and thinking themselves out of danger of disfranchisement have given full fling to their evil passions. They naturally hate reform and, seeing Sandon supported by anti-reformers, voted him in. It is a great mercy that the Tories were pledged to Sandon; for they had power to bring in even a worse subject than General Gascoyne. Sandon also played a low trick in refusing to concur with Thornely in demanding the booths, which the freemen utterly abominate; and Thornely having simply demanded this, the Tory canvassers made that an effectual handle against him. So annoyed were the carpenters against the booths that a large posse of constables were requisite to prevent them from pulling them down that night before polling commenced. I could have wished to say that the matter was indifferent to the cause, as this was only a choice of reformers. But Sandon’s declarations on reform have been very imprudent if he is sincere. He spoke ... slightingly of the bill, which is the favourite of the people and did not say what parts of it he objected to, and made an apology for the bishops ... At his chairing yesterday, he was hissed through the town.
Brougham mss.
Denison was among the 650 who celebrated Sandon’s return at the Amphitheatre, 28 Oct.
Encouraged by his father and Lord Wharncliffe for the Tory ‘Waverers’, whose politics he later endorsed, Sandon welcomed Liverpool’s adoption on 21 Nov. 1831 of a loyal address proposed by Gladstone, which criticized the bill as ‘too sweeping’, opposed peerage creations and recommended raising the £10 qualification in large towns. Presented on 14 Dec. by Lord Skelmersdale, at Wright’s request, the names, professions and addresses of the 1,500 signatories were included to give it ‘weight’.
Toxteth Park has been made a rallying point by Peel and Croker. I suspect that Moss is Peel’s correspondent in this business, and that Peel has an eye to Toxteth, as he has always had to Liverpool. The reformers in the Park should have been earlier in their application. They did indeed apply (without my knowledge) last year; but they have not renewed their claim since the new bill was introduced. Now ministers cannot grant a demand, which could be a silent admission of their own inadvertency. The opposition will, however, be glad to make use of this instrument against them - and since the inhabitants of the Park claim my aid, I must give it them on this occasion.
William Shepherd mss vii. f. 57.
When the bill was jeopardized by defeat in the Lords (to which Harrowby contributed) and the king’s abortive overture to Wellington, the committee of the Parliamentary Reform Union placarded the town, 9 May, and the reformers convened and addressed a Clayton Square meeting, 14 May 1832, to petition for withholding supplies pending its passage. There, Thornely pressed for a declaration of support for Ewart in the event of a dissolution and denounced Sandon’s failure to vote for ‘Lord Grey and the unimpaired bill’, 10 May, as Ewart had done. Molyneux, as chairman, signed the petition, and Waithman and Ewart presented and endorsed it the next day.
I am sorry that you are so angry at my friend Lord Sandon. Recollect, however, he is a great friend of the lord chancellor, and an excellent friend and supporter of the university [London], which was the origin of my friendship with him. I wish also you to keep in mind that he has had the courage to vote for reform against his father, and all his connections, the Bute and Beaufort families, and that his father turned him out of Tiverton in consequence. He was made secretary of the board of control and gave up the place when he found he could not vote with ministers in every division; and at Liverpool he plainly said that he was a reformer, but would pledge himself for the bill, the whole bill and nothing but the bill. He may be wrong, but I can see he is very honest and independent in his opinions. I saw the censure passed upon him by the political union of Liverpool, and I was rather amused in seeing that his punishment was to lose their confidence, as he never had it.
William Shepherd mss vii. f. 87.
A ‘hole and corner’ counter-petition that received 1,406 signatures was apparently not presented. The Parliamentary Reform Union solicited signatures for a rabid declaration denouncing Wellington as a politician. Over 2,000 inhabitants petitioned the Commons requesting extension of the English bill’s provisions to Ireland, 21 June.
A further Liverpool-Manchester railway bill received royal assent, 23 May 1832, after the proprietors had come to an ‘understanding with government on taxation’.
As the commissioners had recommended, Kirkdale, Everton, part of Walton, West Derby and Toxteth Park were added to the constituency under the Boundary Act, increasing the population from 165,175 to 185,000. At 11,283, even allowing for duplicate qualification, the electorate more than doubled and was the second largest in the country. About 1,882 of the 3,733 freemen registered in November 1832, when freemen formed a third of the electorate, were liable to disfranchisement for receiving bribes in 1830. At least 1,451 freemen were also £10 voters.
in the freemen
Number of voters: 4,435 in November 1830
Estimated voters: 4,435 in November 1830
Population: 118972 (1821); 165175 (1831)