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There was a famous contest for Hampton when I was not more than twelve years old: we went to see the members chaired. My father was orange the Carnegies are almost radicals; they supported Mr. Hiloe and we wore orange rosettes." "A most unbecoming color! You must take up with blue now; blue is the only wear for a Fairfax. Most men might wear motley for a sign of their convictions.
He must go through all the miseries of a canvass, must shake hands with crowds of freeholders or freemen, must ask after their wives and children, must hire conveyances for outvoters, must open alehouses, must provide mountains of beef, must set rivers of ale running, and might perhaps, after all the drudgery and all the expense, after being lampooned, hustled, pelted, find himself at the bottom of the poll, see his antagonists chaired, and sink half ruined into obscurity.
Even Coningsby caught the contagion, and Vere, who had imbibed much of Coningsby's political sentiment, prevailed on himself to be neutral. The Conservative Cause triumphed in the person of its Eton champion. The day the member was chaired, several men in Coningsby's rooms were talking over their triumph.
This shews the state of the representation of Boston at that time. Mr. Maddox was elected, having polled 196 votes. But the Major stood upon real constitutional principles, and therefore only polled eight votes. On the 29th of June, Sir Francis Burdett was chaired through the streets of Westminster, and such a multitude was scarcely ever before seen together.
There was open house then at Castle Rackrent, and grand dinners, and all the gentlemen drinking success to Sir Condy till they were carried off. The election day came, and a glorious day it was. I thought I should have died with joy in the street when I saw my poor master chaired, and the crowd following him up and down.
He never solicited one vote; he never showed himself to the electors, till he had been returned at the head of the poll. Even then, as I have heard from one of his nearest relatives, it was with reluctance that he submitted to be chaired. He shrank from being made a show. He loved the people, and he served them; but Coriolanus himself was not less fit to canvass them.
And the wild fellows jumped out of the holes, and four seized the diggers' friend, and they chaired him in their rough way, and they put Carlo into a cradle, and raised him high, and chaired him; and both man and dog were right glad to get safe out of the precarious honor.
Some kissed his sword, his boots, his spurs, or anything they could touch; they pulled hair out of his horse's tail, and one butcher's boy who arrived at the happiness of shaking his hand, they chaired, exclaiming, "This is the man who has shaken hands with Lord Hill!" At last they tore his sword off by breaking the belt and then handed it round from one to another to be kissed.
From the edge of his lawn he could trace the chaired metals falling away, rigid as a bowstring, into the valley of the Prest, studded with the long perspective of the block signals, buttressed with stone, and carried, high above all possible risk, on a forty-foot embankment.
He set off instantly to London, and left at his friend's chambers a rapid narrative of what had happened, with information that he should call on him again on the morrow at nine o'clock, when they were to repair together immediately to Darlford in time for Coningsby to be chaired, for no one entertained a doubt of his triumph.
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