A History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering in the Old Days. Joseph Grego
corruptors of the present times may flatter weak minds with hopes of being admitted to vote without taking the Oath; but it is a vain delusion; since the Law allows the Candidates or any two of the Electors to put the Oath to whomsoever they please; and surely there are at least Two Honest Men in every Borough of the Kingdom, who will think it their duty to bring Corruption to the Test of this just and necessary Oath, to the eternal infamy of all Corruptors, and the Corrupted.”
The oath thus explicitly explained was in sober earnest administered by the lawyers retained in the respective interests, as illustrated by Hogarth in his “Polling Booth,” 1754. It is rather alarming to think of the huge amount of perjury which has followed electioneering. The general elections of the spring of 1741 were a trying ordeal for Walpole; all the well-worn clamours were revived, the “Convention” was once more torn to shreds, and fresh attacks upon the “excise projects” were turned to bitter political account. Amidst a shower of squibs, both literary and pictorial, we find the caricature, “Dedicated to the worthy Electors of Great Britain,” of “The Devil upon Two Sticks,” in which Walpole, as the “Asmodeus” of the situation, is represented as being supported upon the shoulders of two of his bought-majority to ford the “Slough of Despond,” already crossed by some of his followers, who, though in safety on the bank, bear evident marks of the dirty ordeal through which they have been compelled to struggle upon “Robin’s” account. Britannia and her patriotic friends(?) remain high and dry on the other shore; below the satire appears a pointed indication of the unpopular Walpolians, as “Members who voted for the Excise and against the Convention.”
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