CHAPTER IX.

1771-1772.

Fox, at this period, a consistent defender of the King's system-The case of New Shoreham-The Grenville Act-Quarrel between Fox and Wedderburn--The Duke of Portland and Sir James Lowther-The Nullum Tempus Bill-Mnemon-Pertinacity of Sir James Lowther-Sir William Meredith introduces an amending Bill, which is opposed, and at length defeated, by Fox-Fox and Burke-Fox sends a challenge to an unknown adversaryThe petition of the Clergy, and its fate-Story of Mr. Lindsey-The Dissenters' Relief Bill-Priestley, and the early Unitarians-Courage and independence of Charles Fox.

He

Ir must not be supposed that Charles Fox reserved all his combativeness for such far-sounding and historical controversies as those which the House of Commons maintained against the shire of Middlesex, and the City of London. loved the old political system, under which his father had risen to greatness, too frankly and loyally to place himself beneath its standard only on the occasion of a battle royal, or a full-dress parade. Whenever there was a call to arms in the most remote outwork of that stronghold of abuses, behind whose protection the country was with impunity misgoverned, Fox appeared at the threatened spot with all his artillery, almost as soon as the assailants had opened their trenches. His prowess in the cause was a theme for constant discourse and admiration among the rank and file of the Ministerial party; but he never more than half pleased the managers. North, and Thurlow, and the Bedfords had quite wit enough to perceive that his devotion to the very peculiar institutions, which Lord Holland had taught him

to revere, arose from the generous conservatism of youth, and not from the sordid anticipations of self-interest. They foresaw that an enthusiasm like his, when once it had detected itself to be misplaced, would not be long before it was converted into bitter and most effectual hostility; and they looked forward uneasily to the day when his energy and intrepidity might be directed from the outside against those weak points in their circle of defence, whither, with a promptitude which showed his all too accurate knowledge of the ground, he now flew to post himself on the first alarm of danger.

That alarm never rang more clearly to a discerning ear than when the first committee, which had ever been appointed under George Grenville's Act for securing the purity of the constituencies, brought in its first report. In the November of 1770 there was an election in the borough of New Shoreham, in consequence of the death of a sitting member. The country gentlemen of Sussex, who knew what sort of a place New Shoreham was, kept aloof from the contest, which lay between two candidates, of whom one, in the phrase of the day, was a Nabob, and the other a Caribbee. Mr. Purling, the West Indian, got only thirty-seven votes, as against eighty-seven which were secured by his opponent Mr. Rumbold. The bribery oath was administered to Mr. Rumbold's supporters, and freely taken; but it was noticed that the returning officer, Hugh Roberts by name, put to each of them certain queries offensive to the dignity of a British citizen; and the surprise, which his conduct throughout the day provoked, deepened into positive stupefaction when, at the close of the poll, he declared Mr. Purling duly elected. When questioned by a committee of the House of Commons, Roberts stated that he was aware that Mr. Rumbold had a legal majority, but that he was aware also of the means by which the majority had been obtained. There was, he said, at Shoreham a company which, instituted

with a view to the promotion of ship-building, the most important among the confessed industries of the town, had for some years past been re-organised on a less worldly basis. Towards the end of 1764 the association resolved to devote its efforts to works of charity, called itself the Christian Club, and swore all its members on the four Evangelists to be stedfast, true, and silent. Those members included the majority of the borough voters; and the society, whether in the commercial or the religious phase of its existence, had, in point of fact, never been anything else than a trades-union for purposes of corruption. On the principle that no man has a right to injure his neighbour by selling his conscience below the market price,— and that the skilful and the clumsy, the impudent and the bashful, ought to share and share alike in the wages fund of bribery, the Club, on the eve of an election, made its bargain for the payment of a lump sum, which was divided, after the contest was over, among men who were thus enabled to swear at the polling-booth that they had never received a farthing for their votes. Those votes had been bought by Rumbold for five-and-thirty pounds a piece; and Roberts, who had once been a Christian brother, and had left the fraternity, disgusted, (according to his own story,) at finding that his colleagues were quite indifferent to the nationality of their member as long as they saw the colour of his money,' was in a position to identify seventy-six of the majority as members of the Club. With these facts in his cognisance, he had made bold to take the law into his own hands, and save the expense of a petition by summarily altering a return which no Election

1 "Lord John Cavendish.—Do you remember a meeting of the Club upor a false report of Sir Samuel Cornish's death?

"Roberts.-Yes. They were debating upon the several gentlemen who were to represent the borough. They said they would vote for the member who would give most money. John Wood said; 'Yes, damn him, if he was a Frenchman.''

Committee, that ever was packed, could for an instant hesitate

to reverse.

These disclosures produced a wholesome, though transient, effect upon the opinion and the tone of Parliament. Ten years of personal government, and secret influence, had not yet so impaired the character of English gentlemen but that they had still the grace to hate their own faults when distorted in a vulgar mirror. Burke, for once, had the House with him, as he moralised upon the spectacle of a depravity so hypocritical, and, above all, so systematic, "I am shocked," he said, "at the wisdom to be found in these transactions. I am shocked at the virtue ;-at the principles of honour and trust upon which these men acted; principles deserving a better cause. It is a wasp's nest ;-most curiously constructed, but still a wasp's nest ;-and as such it must be destroyed." A Bill disfranchising the members of the Christian Club was introduced, and an address praying His Majesty to order a prosecution of the ringleaders in the conspiracy was carried, with general, but not quite with universal, acceptance. Whatever others might do, Charles Fox was not to be fed with grandiloquent professions of virtue, and sermonised into the support of pharisaical measures. He was almost beside himself with contempt and indignation at the blindness of men who could not or would not see that, in chastising electoral impurity, they were striking at one of the pair of pillars on which the roof rested that sheltered them all in common. The Christian Club was as essential a feature in the system which claimed their allegiance, and provided them with their bread, as the Privy Purse itself. The policy that found favour with the Court was one which would not have lived through the first week in the first session of an unbought Parliament; and bribed representatives would never be returned a second time by unbribed constituents. Fox knew the political situation as exactly and thoroughly as

any veteran in the Cabinet; and, where he was sure of his ground, he never feared to act alone. Faithful among the faithless to the doctrines on which his youth had been nourished, he stood, the Abdiel of corruption, firm and square against this unexpected and imposing manifestation of public virtue. When the question of the Shoreham election was mooted, Fox had thrown a perfect deluge of cold water upon the proposal of an inquiry; and, now that the story had come to the surface in all its ugliness, he breathed fire and fury against the advocates of a policy of severity. While his colleagues were crying with one voice for the exemplary punishment of a town in which there were not as many righteous burgesses as in Sodom,' he could see nothing but the injustice and inconsequence of visiting people with a penal disfranchisement for doing once in seven years that which was done, on every quarter-day, by two out of five among the gentlemen who condemned them. He fought the measure with all the faculties which nature had given him, and with all the weapons which the usage of Parliament, hardly less lavish than nature, had placed at his disposal. He would have divided against the first reading, if he could have induced a single member to assist him as teller. Hampered, though not alarmed, by his isolation, he utilised the rare and brief moments which he spent in his lodgings in Piccadilly to coax and tease Fitzpatrick into joining forces with him in opposition to the Bill. The two kinsmen, by their combined exertions, succeeded in mustering for the defence of the Christian Club a small band whose strength gradually increased from six to fourteen, and from fourteen to eighteen. But time was against Fox; and, before the number of his contingent had turned the score, the Bill had passed into a law which, in an uncontrolled burst of disappointment, he pronounced to be as

I Cavendish, vol. ii. p. 310.