A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering in the Old Days: Showing the State of Political Parties and Party Warfare at the Hustings and in the House of Commons from the Stuarts to Queen VictoriaGrego, Joseph
History
A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering in the Old Days: Showing the State of Political Parties and Party Warfare at the Hustings and in the House of Commons from the Stuarts to Queen Victoria
Grego, Joseph
Great Britain -- Politics and government; Great Britain. Parliament -- Election
The procession and hearse (the driver is exclaiming “Wilkes and
Liberty”) are again shown at St. James’s Palace. The chief promoter,
Charles Dingley, is made the principal butt of this satire, and,
as the address began with him, it is appropriately so terminated.
The hearse with the placards is succeeded by a coach bearing on the
roof a windmill, an allusion to Dingley’s too famous saw-mills at
Limehouse, which were dismantled by the sawyers out of work and other
rioters. The coachman of this equipage is endeavouring to pacify the
mob: “Wilkes and Liberty, Gentlemen; I had no hand in the d----d
Address.” The chief offender, seen inside the coach, is also appealing
to the incensed crowd: “For God’s sake, Gentlemen, spare me; I wish
the Address had been in Hell before I meddled with it.” His bemired
footman is declaring, “My livery’s like my master, d----d Dirty.” The
next coach has on it a zany with cap and bells, seated “on the Massacre
of Aboyna;” this figure of folly is exclaiming, “I give Mr. Dingle
the lead;” the rider, one of the loan-contractors and bidders for
ministerial favour, cries, “Ayez pitié de moi!” “Dingle’s Downfall, a
new Song,” is chanted by a female ballad-singer. Dead cats and mud are
thrown at the procession, which is followed by the groans and hisses of
the spectators.
The foregoing events are further elucidated in “A Dialogue between the
Two Heads on Temple Bar.” The narrator professes to have overheard the
following conversation upon politics between the decapitated heads of
the 1745 rebels stuck over Temple Bar:--
“But soon more surpris’d, and I’ll tell you the cause, sir,
The heads on Temple Bar were in a deep discourse, sir.
‘Why, Fletcher,[55] your head and mine has been fixed hither
These full twenty years, expos’d to all weather
For being concerned in a Scottish rebellion:
Not like Bute, the nation to rob of three million.’
‘Ay, Townsend, but Bute play’d the jockey so fair, sir,
Got the money for riding the old Georgian mare, sir,
But his tricks at St. James’s Wilkes soon did disclose, sir,
Tho’ squint-ey’d, saw how Bute led the King by the nose, sir.’
‘Why, Fletcher, that’s worse than open rebellion!
And here’s room on the Bar if they would but behead him;
In St. George’s Fields there’s room for a gibbet,
But justice of late, they don’t choose to exhibit.
If justice took place, ’twould cause Jack some trouble,
Lord Mansfield himself, might, by chance, mount the scaffold.
No more alt’ring records; but this joke might be said,
As blind with the scales, he appears without head.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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