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SCOTTISH. iK,KC^*'QJR Ail. FOLinfllCS >©« . C» SB JfiAv .s, v>S™ Scs. SHS (V?H IC,- £ SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY FOURTH SERIES VOLUME II Papers on Scottish Electoral Politics PAPERS ON SCOTTISH ELECTORAL POLITICS 1832-1854 edited by J. I. Brash, ma ★ ★ EDINBURGH printed for the Scottish History Society by T. AND A. CONSTABLE LTD. 974 © Scottish History Society 1974 |29 ' tj) SBN 9500260 7 7 Printed in Great Britain PREFACE I should like to express my gratitude to the many people who have helped me in the preparation of this volume. I am especially grateful to his Grace the 8th Duke of Buccleuch firstly for allowing me several years ago to examine the Buccleuch Manuscripts, then at Dalkeith House and since deposited in the Scottish Record Office, and secondly for permitting me to publish a selection of these papers. I regret that the death of the Duke occurred in October 1973 shortly before my work was completed. My thanks are due also to the Right Honour- able the 16th Earl of Dalhousie for permission to print some letters from the Dalhousie Manuscripts, and to Sir Archibald Hope, 17th Baronet of Craighall, for his hospitality and for allowing me to examine the papers of his great-grandfather Sir John Hope the nth Baronet. I am also grateful to the proprietors of the Scotsman for permission to reprint two letters which appeared in that newspaper in 1841. Through the generosity of the Right Honourable the Earl of Crawford by a donation to the Scottish History Society from the Lindsay Trust, it was possible to provide the map which illustrates this volume. I am grateful to Lord Crawford, and to Mr Ian Scott who transformed my notes into such an elegant map. I am indebted to the University of Western Australia which has supported my research for several years and enabled me to spend a sabbatical year in Scotland in 1971 when most of the work for this volume was carried out. As much of my research has been conducted out of Scotland I have incurred a considerable debt to the staffs of the National Library of Scotland, the Scottish Record Office and the British Museum Library for the assistance they have given me with the provision of research material and information. I am also pleased to acknowledge the generous support I have received from Mr Leonard Jolley, Librarian in my university. Finally I should like to record my gratitude to the Scottish History Society for giving me the opportunity to make a small contribution to the study of a period of Scottish history undeservedly neglected by students of political and electoral development, the years between the first and second reform acts. My thanks are due in particular to vi PREFACE Dr T. I. Rae, Secretary of the Society, for his advice and encourage- ment and for his considerable labours in seeing my manuscript through the press. Perth, Western Australia j. i. brash January, 1974 CONTENTS Preface v Introduction ix Map Ixvi MIDLOTHIAN POLITICS 1832-1854 I DONALD HORNE’S ELECTION SURVEYS 220 Index 279 A generous contribution from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland towards the cost of producing this volume is gratefully acknowledged by the Council of the Society Thepapers presented in this volume illustrate the electoral organisa- tion and activities of Scottish Conservatives during the twenty years after their almost total defeat at the general election in December 1832. The passing of the Scottish Reform Act in the summer of 1832 had been a severe blow for those groups of individuals and families predominantly Tory which for years had dominated the politics of most Scottish counties and burghs; and the extent of their defeat seemed clearly demonstrated at the general election, when in the opinion of one Conservative agent only eight of the fifty-three members returned were ‘decided’ Conservatives.1 The many losses could be attributed in part to the continuing excitement caused by the ‘reform’ issue which dominated the elec- tion, but much of the explanation lies in the new set of electoral conditions established by the Reform Act. It had altered the scale and the character of electoral politics in Scotland and posed serious problems of adjustment for those who wished to retain their political influence. In 1830 the total electorate (the holders of qualifying ‘superiorities’, frequently nominal, in counties, and the provosts and councillors of royal burghs) probably consisted of fewer than 4,000 individuals.2 The scale of electoral politics was small; personal influ- ence and patronage in its many forms played a significant part; and electoral management required finesse and close attention to the needs and interests of individual electors. When the privilege of voting was restricted to so few every vote was valuable, especially to its possessor. This was particularly true in a county where, rather un- commonly, a series of contests occurred, as in Midlothian in 1811, 1812 and 1818 when the purchase price of a superiority soared. James 1 2 Below p. 220. I_ Henry J- Wilson, Cockburn Political estimated State of Scotlandthe total (London, number 1833),of persons 3 45> with yields county 1,303 votes burgh as voters; 2,500, Edinburgh Review, hi (1830), 210-11. SCOTTISH ELECTORAL POLITICS Gibson, ws,1 wrote to Sir John Dalrymple2 on 19 December 1816, ‘ Cathcart’s Vote was purchased by Lieutenant John Thomson of the Royal Navy wanting Promotion’.3 Thomson paid a total of .£1,560; another vote purchased in the county that year cost a Mr Fletcher .£1,660. The Reform Act abolished the old qualifications and introduced new ones which increased the size and altered the composition of the electorate. In counties the right of voting was granted to proprietors of subjects valued at -£10 a year, tenants of .£10 properties on leases for life or at least fifty-seven years, and tenants of .£50 properties on leases of nineteen years. In burghs the basic qualification was the ownership or occupancy of property of an annual value of £10. At the first registrations in 1832 approximately 33,000 county and 31,000 burgh electors were enrolled. By modern standards and even by con- temporary English standards most of the individual electorates were still small, but the total number of electors was fifteen or sixteen times greater than in 1830 and by 1839 had increased by 45% to 48,000 in the counties, and by 14% to 36,000 in the burghs.4 In counties, with which this volume is mainly concerned, the new electorate was generally of a mixed character. The old freeholders were allowed to retain their votes for their own lifetime, but they found themselves part of a much larger and more diverse body of electors-consisting of other landed proprietors (who not being superiors had not previously qualified), tenant farmers, small numbers of professional men, merchants and manufacturers, and groups of retail traders and craftsmen in towns and villages within the county. The large landed proprietors were generally Conserva- tive and most of the tenant farmers could be relied on to follow their landlords politically. But there was often a large number of £10 proprietors of houses, gardens and workshops in the villages, many perhaps religious dissenters, and the majority generally supporters of reform. These were the ‘ten-pounders’ described by James Hope, 1 James Gibson, ws, 1765-1850, better known as Sir James Gibson-Craig, 1st Bart, of Riccarton (1831), a leading Whig politician in Edinburgh; dnb, iv, 1367-8; Crombie’s Modern2 Athenians, ed. Scott Douglas (Edinburgh, 1882) 55-59. Sir John Hamilton-Dalrymple, 5th Bart, of Cousland, 1771-1853, general 1838, mp Midlothian,3 1833-4, succeeded as 8th Earl of Stair, 1840; dnb, v, 425-6. 4 S[cottish R[ecord] 0[ffice] GD135/114, ‘Letters 1812’. Return of registered electors, Parliamentary] P[apers], 1844, 11, xxxviii. INTRODUCTION xi ws,1 in 1835 as ‘a class of men who can never be depended upon, and who should never, for their own sakes, have been entrusted with the Franchise’.2 They were seen as a threat to the natural right of the landed interest to control the return of the county member. And although it would be wrong to suggest that in 1832 the rural electors were uniformly Conservative in sympathy, it was often the town element which predominated to win a county election for a land- owner of reform principles. For example in the county of Selkirk the electors in the countryside voted 104 to 31 in favour of Alexander Pringle of Whytbank, a Conservative, but the ten-pounders of Selkirk and Galashiels secured the return of the Reform candidate, Robert Pringle of Clifton, by voting for him 102 to 20.3 If the defeat of the Conservatives in December 1832 was largely a consequence of the Reform Act, it was one intended by those who prepared the measure, for they set out to destroy an electoral system which had enabled their opponents to dominate Scottish politics for so many years. The Whigs had an immediate and almost universal success in 1832. In the burghs this lasted for the remainder of the century; between 1832 and 1886 the Conservatives won only four- teen contests in Scottish burghs. But in many counties the Whigs’ success was short-lived as the Conservatives steadily regained seats during the 1830s, until at the general election of 1841 they won twenty of the thirty counties, sixteen of them without opposition. The intention of the reformers was that not ‘ a jot or tittle ’ of the old system would remain, but Dr Ferguson has shown how defects in the Reform Act provided opportunities for electoral practices just as iniquitous as any that were employed before 1832.4 As Sheriff John Cay commented in 1838 after several years experience in the registration and appeals courts, ‘never .