Description

[003258] [Kendal Election 1843]. A Few Questions for Mr. Warburton. Kendal: Gazette Office, 1843. First Edition. Elephant Folio. Unbound. Broadside. Good. Single sided printed broadside, approximately 320mm x 435mm in size.

Cropped tightly to text, once laid down and halved, now lifted and rejoined with Japanese tissue, slightly creased with some light ink staining and off-setting, dated October 1843 to foot in ink.

Anti-Warburton broadside, pertaining to his time as an M.P. for Bridport, “at the general election of 1826 Warburton was returned to parliament for the borough of Bridport in Dorset as a radical. He made his first long speech on 30 November, on foreign goods, and was re-elected in 1830, 1831, 1833, 1835, 1837, and 1841, all of the elections after the Reform Bill of 1832 being severely contested. Even after the 1832 act, Bridport only had 500 voters; it was notoriously corrupt, as well as being dominated by the naval interest. Here Warburton’s lumber experience assisted him and he topped the poll. On 8 September 1841 Warburton resigned his seat on the ground that a petition would have ‘proved gross bribery against his colleague [John Romilly] in which his own agent would have been implicated. It subsequently came out that before the passing of the Reform Bill he himself had paid large sums of money improperly to certain of the electors. A select committee was appointed to inquire into ‘corrupt compromises’ alleged to have been made in certain constituencies, so as to avoid investigation into past transactions, and the question whether bribery had been practised at Bridport was referred to the same committee, but nothing resulted from its investigations. Warburton was out of the Commons until 9 November 1843, when he was elected for Kendal. At the dissolution of 1847 he retired from political life, letting it be known that the reforms which he had at heart had been effected” (ODNB)

Printed at the Gazette Office (Westmorland Gazette), a long-standing pro-Tory newspaper.

Not in COPAC