Westmorland Canvass, April 8, 1818 - Cumberland and Westmorland Newspaper Transcriptions

Westmorland Canvass, April 8, 1818

WESTMORLAND CANVASS .. Part I
(From the "Carlisle Journal")

In our last paper we gave a hurried account of MR. BROUGHAM'S canvass, from which, or indeed from any thing we can say, our readers will be able to form but a very imperfect idea of the enthusiasm which pervades all ranks of the county in support of the great cause, of which he is the favourite chamption - it is with difficulty he can prevail on the people to allow horses to be put to his carriage at all.

Such scenes are exhibited in every part of the county as must strike the LOWTHER party with dismay, while they astonish even the most sanguine friends of the independent cause.

Who could have imagined that the peaceful vales of Grassmere, Loughrigg, Ambleside, and Patterdale, should have witnessed a sight of upwards of 200 of their stoutest natives, all decorated with blue ribands, dragging a carriage over the steepest hills, and rending the air with shouts of - " Independence for ever ! " at every halt; preceded by flags flying and music playing ? Yes such is the case. We noticed MR. BROUGHAM being drawn round Grassmere into Langdale, Loughrigg, and so on to Ambleside.

Last Saturday, it being known that he was to go from Pooley-bridge, up the Cumberland side of Ullswater, to Patterdale, and thus to be out of the county only a few miles, an immense number of good friends met him at Glencoyne-bridge, and greeted his entrance into Westmorland again by shouts which made the mountains resound. They drew him, in the usual way, accompanied by flags and music brought over from Ambleside, to the inn at Patterdale, where he addressed them in an elegant manner, complimenting them highly on the great spirit which they had shown; and well might he do so, as the good men of Ambleside had crossed Kirkstone that morning, during a thick fog, and after a storm of snow, at the imminent risk of their lives !

On Monday morning, MR. BROUGHAM resumed his canvass, proceeding on horseback through the West Ward, to Cliburn, Morland, Crosby Ravensworth and Bolton; at each place he was met by a great concourse of freeholders. Tuesday being the day fixed for going to Penrith [ in Cumberland, but the market-town of nearly the whole West Ward of Westmorland ], an immense multitude collected at Brougham-hall, for the purpose of drawing hm down; this was with much earnestness resisted by MR. BROUGHAM, as Penrith was in another county, and he wished to visit it privately; but there was no stopping the tide of popular feeling which set in, and a regular procession was accordingly formed; the whole road - from Brougham-hall to Penrith was filled with people, and the acclamations on his going through the town rent the air. He was drawn to the George Inn, from which he addressed the numerous multitude.

There were about eight thousand present; every window was full, the people were even seated on the house-tops, and those in the streets were so jammed together that they moved like waves of the sea.

After MR. BROUGHAM had been introduced to the freeholders residing in Penrith and neighbourhood, he returned into Westmorland to proceed on his canvass; he was drawn, as before, to Brougham-bridge, the junction of the counties, where, with reluctance, the people allowed the horses to be put to the carriage. The multitude left him at Brougham-hall, after giving three tremendous cheers.

The proceedings of Wednesday surpass any day which has gone before it. Having slept at Newbiggan-hall, he was waited on in the morning by an assemblage of freeholders from the adjoining county. At Kirkby-thore another cavalcade met him, the horses were taken from his carriage, and a regular procession formed. Above 200 horsemen rode in front, followed by two bands of music, six flags, with 'BROUGHAM and Independence", and other devices; MR. BROUGHAM's carriage came next, followed by several others.

In this manner they proceeded to Appleby, where they were greeted with bells ringing; every window was full of ladies waving blue ribands and handkerchiefs. MR. BROUGHAM was drawn round the high cross, and alighted at MRS. RITSON's house, from which he addressed the immense concourse of anxious auditors to the following effect:

THE ADDRESS BY MR. BROUGHAM.

Gentlemen,    -     Arrived at length in the metropolis of our county, I exult to find myself surrounded by hundreds of gallant yeomanry, who, flying to horse, have rushed forward to confound the insolent boast of our adversaries, that the people are with us and the proprietors with them. The sight now displayed is an earnest of another which awaits them on that yet prouder day when, in the same place, we shall close our labours, and make the air ring with shouts of victory. Until then, let us persevere in the course which we have hitherto held, guarding by the propriety of our conduct against all but their inventive malice, from which nothing can secure us; and firm to our purpose of doing no more than the duty self-defence enjoins.

I heartily congratulate you upon the rapid progress which the cause of independence has made - I have now been over the greatest part of the county, and in all the places but one where the adverse interest is said to be the strongest. Every where I have seen with my own eyes, glaring proofs of the delusion in which the LOWTHERS are studiously kept by their interested agents; and every where I have seen the strength which they did possess, weakened and divided. I have satisfied myself of the unparalleled accuracy with which the accounts of our canvass are kept, forming such a contrast to those of the other party, whose celebrated "balance-sheet" you may be assured that perseverance only, is required to make your own.

At the present stage of the contest, it is fit that we should pause to reflect on the conduct of our antagonists, or rather of the persons through whom they are made known to us, and deceived respecting us. It grieves me very deeply to mention among those, a considerable portion of the Magistrates of the county. For those estimable characters, who compose the local magistracy of the county, while they perform their public duties unbiassed by partiality, and maintain the dignity belonging to their judicial station, I profess to entertain the most sincere respect. They deserve the gratitude of the community, the rather because it is their only recompense, and it is a debt, I am persuaded, cheerfully paid wherever it is due.

But there is another species of Magistrates, who are entitled to no thanks - men who bring a reproach upon the name, while they prostitute the authority of justice - exercising with a base and restless activity all the vile arts by which the rewards of voluntary degradation may be earned - abandoning themselves by wholesale to a party, and running into every excess that the blindness of factious zeal can prompt: or, more despicable still, humbling themselves before some great man, seeking his favour, to gratify a childish vanity, or compass more solid advantages, and wilfully becoming his devoted creature in all the walks of the lowest subserviency.

I speak not of the fulsome cringing, by which the demeanour of this tribe is marked at the court of the provincial sovereign, their only liege lord. For ought I care, they may lick the dust until even they are sick of crawling - there let them be as meek, as fawning, as crouching as they are offensive and domineering towards the rest of his Majesty's people. Such grovelling only sullies themselves; and if those for whose gratification it is intended, have such appetite as not to reject it, I have no reason to interfere. But when they come forth among us, armed with the ensigns of their office, and swoln with its dignity - wielding the sword of justice, not as a terror to evil does, but to brandish it over their patron's antagonists, and menace those whom, with all their weakness, they dare not touch - holding the balance, not with an even hand, but that the scale may preponderate into which their master's wishes are flung, while the other, loaded with the interests of the public, kicks the beam;     [ loud and repeated cheers ] - then, truly, it is time for us to ask, whether such things are to be borne in a country famed above all others for the pure administration of the law. The figure which I have rapidly sketched, your local knowledge will easily fill up.

I will not detain you even with specimens of all the contrivances to which, in endless variety, some of those conservators of the peace have lost themselves; - seeking to entrap you by promises, or to warn you by dark hints, or to intimidate you by open menaces. Of all these tricks I hear in every corner of the county; sometimes it is an offer to "open a man's house", if he will support the LOWTHER interest; sometimes a vague prospect of advantage is held out; not unfrequently the plain hint is given of TAKING AWAY A LICENSE !

But, in truth, there needs no express words on the part of those men to effect their purpose; the poor people under their control know their power, and see their leanings; the inference is plain, and the end may be gained in silence.

But let me exhort you to bear in mind, that they dare not do as they list. The law of the land will protect you from them; the House of Commons is open to the complaints of the oppressed; and let me remind them that the day of retribution is come; its first hour has already dawned; its last may see them standing before a court where justice is really done, and favour shown neither to the King's Lieutenant nor to the King himself. To those base and short-sighted men I would name the Judges of the land, not merely as a warning, but as an illustrious example.

You are accustomed to regard them with a profound reverence, when, in their appointed rounds, they come among you to dispense the inestimable blessings of pure and equal justice; and if I see much more of their public conduct, it only tends to impress me with a deeper veneration; - they acknowledge no distinction of persons - they mix in no party turmoils; abstracted from the world, they share but little in its amusements, and not at all in its business.

Far from courting the grandee of a district, the decent rule of their lawful sovereign's court excludes them from its precincts, that they may not tread on such slippery grounds, or breathe an atmosphere tainted by sycophancy; through them the law speaks in the calm, clear accents of simple justice, not in the hoarse and boisterous lanugage of the passions; and after carning the warmest thanks of their countrymen,they are forbidden to taste the sweets of popular applause, which other men deem an honourable reward of virtue.

Let this bright pattern of judicial purity be constantly in the eyes of the magistrates I have spoken of. If it cannot excite their natures to imitation, it may strike them with envy; but they must bear in mind also, that though its perfections may be far above their reach, yet its dispensations may speedily visit their misdeeds.

Another class of our adversaries' agents are clothed with still more sacred functions. I allude to the reverend gentlemen who have made themselves so active, and many of whom are magistrates also. Here, as before, you at once perceive I speak of individuals merely. Far be it from me to comprehend in one censure all the clergymen, any more than all the justices, who are opposed to us. I will yield to no man in the respect so justly due to the members of the Established Church who maintain the dignity of their character, and are at once an ornament to the hierarchy and a blessing to their flocks. But I trust I am not bound to show the same degree of veneration towards those who deem no services too mean by which the interest of "the family" can be promoted; who absolutely outbid one another in the surrender of independence for preferment; those willing tools who vie among themselves in a disgusting competition for the dirtiest work. I am a Church of England man, and I view its institutions with the most unaffected regard; but I trust those institutions do not require me to venerate the priest who spends six days among publicans, plying the peasantry with liquor by day and by night, and rests on the 7th day to preach against drunkenness; or him who can sit all night with a single freeholder in hopes of gaining a promise from the last glimmering of his senses; or him who devotes his time to the still more nauseous work of anonymous slander, or his holy brother who drives the kindred trade of tale-bearer; or him who in any way carries on a traffic in the votes, that is, the consciences of his flock for his own profit.

Of the incessant and sordid activity which distinguish this race, I have had many proofs - some relating personally to myself. They have represented me as a Dissenter and as a Roman Catholic ! both stories could not be true; so they were circulated in different quarters. One of those two was impossible, and he who told it must have known its falsity; for if I were a Papist, how could I sit in Parliament ? Think you that these men trouble themselves at all about my religious principles ? no, no, their objection to me rests on other grounds.

They would never inquire whether I belonged to the Church, or no, if I had but the patronage of churches belonging to me [ loud cheers ]. I might be a Turk, or an infidel, if I had only the means of advancing them and their families. It is not my spiritual concerns which they care about, but my secular deficiencies; nay, if I would but partake in their sycophancy towards the great man, they would give me a dispensation for all omissions towards Heaven !

They would never heed my neglect of the heavenly Being whose servants they ought to be, if I only adored the earthly grandee whose slaves they are [ continued cheering ]. We have not, indeed, quite the same Gods; for it is Mammon whom they serve, and I abjure him.

But all differences would be overlooked could I but join with them in sacrificing conscience and character to their idol [ loud cheers ]. I have mentioned the subject of religious distinctions, and it becomes me to be explicit upon a matter which I know excites some altercation in different parts of this country. In the bosoms of the Established Church, I have lived and shall die; but it becomes me not to judge other men; and I am an advocate for unbounded toleration. To deprive a citizen of even the smallest portion of his political righs because of his religious belief, appears to me the very height of injustice, and therefore I say nothing of its gross impolicy. Highly as I prize the honour of representing you, dearly as I would consent to purchase the glory of restoring your rights, I will not sacrifice my sincere conviction for any reward which man has to bestow; and cost what it may, I openly avow my opinion to be, that no subject of the Crown, whether Dissenter or Catholic, should be excluded frm the pale of the constitution, merely because he is not within the pale of the church.

This avowal I know will alienate a few voices from me; but I cannot abandon my own judgment; still less can I leave this point unexplained.

Besides those agents whom I have described, there are others in the actual pay of the Lord-Lieutenant, and whose intent it is to deceive him upon the state of the contest, to keep it the longer alive. Some persons have volunteered their services, in return for personal civilities which flattered their vanity; some retained by patronage, of which they have tasted largely and still expect more. Among these classes there are a few respectable men to whose conduct nothing which I now say can be deemed applicable.

I may lament, but I have no right to blame, the course they pursue - of the bulk of them I must speak as I feel; and I venture to assert, that when they call themselves the "friends" of the LOWTHER family, they assume the name that least of any describes them. That family, I trust, is incapable of the arts in the practice of which their whole zeal is exhibited. It ought to be greatly ashamed of the ground on which they rest the LOWTHER cause. For, in answer to every objection derived from personal unfitness, and from past public conduct, to supply all the admitted defects of your representatives - to support the unheard of claim to both seats in an independent county, these discreet supporters bring forward this one argument only -- riches !   riches !   No man can deny the wealth of the family, and upon that they rest its case.

We certainly cannot object to taking this ground. Let them cry up the LOWTHER revenue from whatever sources derived - and welcome. Let them propound it as the substitute for every other gift - 'tis their own affair. But they advance it in a manner too offensive to be borne; not content with stating the overgrown property of our adversaries as their only qualification, they pretend to disqualify every one whose means are less ample; and some of those agents, judging by themselves, profess to believe that no public man can be honest with a moderate income, because they have found it impossible to retain their political integrity in a state of poverty. Was ever insolence heard of to match this - this purse-pride in the paupers whom your adversaries have quartered upon the public ? If ordinary purse-pride be deemed one of the most offensive weaknesses to which our frail nature is subject, what shall be said of the pride that erects itself into a nuisance upon the foundation of another man's purse ?

It is hard to bear the air and gait of conscious wealth; but to be bullied by state paupers or family parasites with the riches of their paymaster and patron, is absolutely more than common patience can endure. The jack-daw, that strutted about in borrowed plumage, was ridiculous; but, barring the hoarseness of his croak, he was a harmless animal; but these cormorants are not content with assuming absurd airs of consequence, they must need attack all that come in their way, - sparing only the hand that feeds them, ravenous of their patron's fare, and tearing to pieces the reputation of his antagonists:   perhaps we had better leave them alone. It is the instinct of their inferior nature. We should treat them as we do other noxious animals - guard ourselves against their attacks, but feel no resentment.

The charge of jacobinism has by those same tools been industriously propagated against me. Now, if by jacobin is meant one who regards the whole fabric of Government as intended for the benefit of the people; who holds that every nation has an inherent inalienable right to be governed with the smallest possible restraint upon natural liberty; at the least practicable expense levied upon the classes best able to bare it, and in a manner least vexatious; who considers the reduction of the public burdens within those limits as the imperative duty of a representative of the people, and the defence of constitutional liberty against all encroachments as a duty still more sacred - if by jacobinism is signified a constant watching of the executive, and an habitual jealousy in whatever hand lodged,   I must plead guilty of the charge; for the word, thus explained, describes the constant tenour of my public life; but, if by jacobinism, these calumniators understand a man weary of the English Constitution, desirous of exchanging it for some untried plan of government; prepared to seek, through the horrors of revolution, the establishment of a new system; - above all, if they mean one who would, while he had a spark of life in his frame, suffer the foot of any foreign invader to pollute one hair's breadth of the territory sacred to English freedom and independence - if jacobinism means this, the name is not for me.

I give it back to those [ and let them take it, with all its appurtenances ] who have brought the government into contempt by their extravagant and indiscriminate flatterers - who weaken the attachment of the King's best subjects by confounding with traitors, every one not exactly bigotted to the minister of the day - who insult the people for the very sufferings which misrule has produced, and exercise the authority delegated to them in acts of subaltern oppression, or display it with an insolence often more unbearable than tyranny itself.

These are the real jacobins - the bitterest of domestic enemies - the fomenters of discord - the abettors of treason.    Mis-government may goad the most loyal people to resistance; they who patiently suffer their treasure to be drained and their blood lavished, have oftentimes made a stand when they saw their complaints were given to the winds. But there is an oppression more grinding - an insolence more galling than any that princes and ministers can inflict in the mass.

It is the restless, quick-sighted, unsparing diligence of subordinate agents; and the superfluous annoyance which they create to gratify their vanity or their spite.

To all these tribes, we, in the present contest, are teaching a memorable lesson, and to the world at large, exhibiting a signal proof how impossible it is for Englishmen to bear the abuse of power. This county is covering herself with lasting renown. Long the admiration of the south, for the mingled grandeur of her scenery, she will henceforth be still more gloriously distinguished for the inestimable spirit of her gallant people.

Their fame will be held in perpetual remembrance for rising up against oppression, undaunted by the most perilous combination of public power and of private influence. The enthusiasm of independence has not merely animated the multitudes who inhabit our towns; it has spread itself into every remote and solitary place, and made the barren mountains and sequestered dales ring with the sounds of liberty.

This spirit will not be confined within our narrow boundaries; it must spread into the neighbouring counties; and wherever an English yeomanry exists, whose rights are despised, or whose power is unknown, there the flames will be kindled by the sparks that fly from hence.

All England will benefit by our exertions; but the chief advantage, and the highest glory will be ours."

[ Great and continued cheering ].

This speech was heard with the most perfect attention, and cheered throughout with the greatest enthusiasm.