The Express.
London, England, 1849-08-22 00:00:00

EVENING, AUGUST -22,- 1849.

OUR REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM
CHELTENHAM.
*The queen of English watering places" was en-
lhatieblese by the Reform Act. It conferred upon the
a parish of Cheltenham" the privilege of returning
woe representative to parliament. Great was the re-
ighting in Cheltenham thereupon—almost as re- t as
the joy. there would be now if the " - ;,1%
wee called, were abrogate..
en e ge as it
The Cheltenham of 1832 Was not altogether the
Cheltenham of 1849. It had not then attained an.y-
thing like its present magnitude. Lansdowne, Mont-
pellier, and Bays-hill, now in some respects the most
important parts of Cheltenham, were then =built—
we might almost say unthought of. The town now
depends upon a swarm of dieters from far and near,
—people who come and go, and are never seen, or
beard, or thought of more. Formerly it relied upon
a widay different class; a small circle of elite who
eamedownthere every season as regularly as the season
came. There was a sociality about the place and its
society that seemed elsewhere in England to be en-
tirely unknown. And what a brilliant sparkling so-
ciety it was! Had London been picked in the season,
and all the best men and women been brought to-
gether, it would scarcely have been possible to have
formed a more delightful circle than used in those
days to frequent the rooms at Cheltenham.
In a very remarkable degree all this was owing to
the influence of Col. Fitzhardinge Berkeley and his
brothers, who resided: more or less in Cheltenham
every year, and were the leaders of its ton, and the
chief promoters of its gaieties. The Berkeley hounds
were kept here, and afforded some of the best sport
in the kingdom to the hunting men ; balls were given
every week under Berkeley patronage, and assemblies
held, of which they were the stars. The theatre was
indebted to them foe the whole of the support that it
received. A prettier little theatre at that time was
not to be found in England. It was to Chelten-
ham then what Madame Vestris's Olympic
was to London afterwards. Occasionally, the enter-
, tainments there were varied by amateur performances.
The Berkeley, played in comedy and farce, and they
brought out with them such an abundance of ability
that the amateur performances at Cheltenham be-
came
famous through the kingdom.
The popularity of such a family in such a town as
Cheltenham may be easily conceived. The entire
population felt under obligation to the Berke-
leys. Colonel Fitzhardinge was the prince of
the place. Barring the fact that personally he
had not a farthing's worth of property in it, he was
to Cheltenham precisely what the Grand Doke of
Nassau is to Wiesbaden, or the King of Wurtemburg
to Wildbad.l To have lost the Berkeley' as residents,
would at that time have been thought by every resi-
dent in Cheltenham the certain doom and ruin of'!
their rising little town.
When Cheltenham was declared a borough, a dozen
gentlemen presented themselves to the constituency,
each as the most fit and proper person to represent
their interests in parliament. Eleven of them took'
measures, more or less decided, to secure the voters
suffrages. The candidate who seemed to have the
greatest chance was an old gentleman named Gard-
ner, at once a brewer and a banker in the town, who
was liked as a townsman and who had many private
friends. Mr. Gardner was taking measures to pro-
mote his return, when it was gently suggested to
Ye that Lord Segrave (Colonel Berkeley had
been made a peer) would like his brother Craven
to get in for Cheltenham. Well, then, I am sure,
said Mr. Gardner, none of us ought to stand in the
' way of him. The Berkeleya are the greatest bine-
, factors to the town, and not a man in Cheltenham but
should be glad to make one of them its represen-
tative.
In this spirit Mr. Gardner and all the eleven can-
didates retired from the field at once, and left it clear
for the lioo. Craven Berkeley. He was elected
amid manifold rejoicings, and without the expression
of a murmur of dissent. Probably in the annals
of electioneering there rarely has been so unanimous
a return. All Cheltenham was proud to have got
him as a member, and every one augured the best re-
sults, political and local, from the choice which they
had made.
Mr. Craven Berkeley's course in parliament was
nearly all that could be wished. He proved himself
an able member. and • isont.d a steady liberal. On
all the great divisions ho was right, and he was far
more frequently in the house than even his moat
business-like constituents expected.
In 1833 Mr. Craven Berkeley was able to render up
a good account to his constituents. On their part
they expressed entire satisfaction with him. At the
husteogs, however, a second candidate was nominated.
It was a Mr. W. P. Gaskill, son of a gentleman of
property in Gloucestershire, who was an ultra-liberal,
perhaps a chartist. He came forward merely, as be
mid, to give the electors an opportunity of expressing
their opinions. With this object he went to a poll,
and rcceiv.d 25 votes against 411 for the former
member. An opposition so ineffective only strength-
ened the great Berkeley influence.
There was about this time, however, a coerce of
some dissatiafactitm in the town of Cheltenham, which
did not show itself openly, bat which doubtless
opt rated much. Lord Segrave had become the Lord-
Lieutenant of the county. It had devolved upon him
to recommend its magistrates. In a place like Chel-
tenham, where there are so many idle men, it must
necessarily happen that but few of those who
desire the doubtful distinction of being put
in the commission can altogether be satisfied.
The disappointed e xpeetants, of curse, averred
that the Lord Lieutenant never did put any
one in the commission who was not his own partisan.
This is said of nearly every Lord Lieutenant, and,
of meet of them, with truth. In Lord Segrave's case
it might be partly tree, or it might not—we are not
called on to decide. But as time pawed on, there
came to be a good deal more complaint about the ma-
gistrates. Cceltenham has no municipality ; its
justice is therefore all to be administered by
county magnates ; and of course all those against
whom the county magistrates decided were full of
grievances against the constitution of the bench. It
was in 1837 that the feeling upon thus matter was
first of all exhibited. The town by this time had
istatased. Persons had come into it who were less
stemected with the Berkeley' than the residents of
biz years previousiy. Lord Segrave, too, as a
peer and lord-lieutenant, did not associate to much
in its society us he had done antecedently.
All there things told on the electoral position
of the place. Some parties who called them-
selves conservatives determined on bringing out
a candidate. Toey nominated Mr. Jonathan Peel, a
first cousin of Sir Robert's, who was living in the
town or near it, and with this gentleman for a can-
didate, the first real contest occurred at Cheltenham.
The Tories had no chance, but nevertheless they made
a manly fight, and they did far better than they
expected. They poled close upon 300 votes; the
numbers being for Berkeley 632, Peel 298.
It was the result of this election that deter-
mined the conservatives to try their strength
again in 1841. On this occasion they
brought forward a candidate who was par-
ticularly calculated to obtain support. Mr.
Gardner, who was mentioned as a candidate in 1832,
was dead ; his influence and property had descended
to a nephew of the name of Agg, who had adopted
the additional surname of Gardner, and who resided in
the town. In many respects Mr. Agg Gardner was
personally popular, and by purchasing of the Sherborne
family the lordship of the manor of Cheltenham, he
had acquired a position in connexion with the town
which give him some title to look to the honors cf its
representation. He came forward on moderate con-
servative principles, and was supported by a great
deal of the respectability of Cheltenham. The battle
which was fought, however, was not, we regret to say,
merely fought on principle. At this election public-
houses were thrown open, and a very lavish expendi-
ture was incurred on both sides. Walking cursorily
through such a town as Cheltenham, it seems asto-
nishitg why these practices should be resorted
to. The place would seem to be made up
of residences of a superior class—the abodes,
evidently, of persons far above pot-house associ-
ations. But, on the other hand, if you take the
list of voters, you will find that the inhabitants of
these large houses by no means form the constituency of
the borough. The great majority of the stuccoed
villas and plastered lodges are let furnished by the
week, or month, or quarter, to families who care in-
finitely more about; their glass of water at the
Old Well than , about the representation of
Cheltenham, or anything affecting it. The
real elector is the greengrocer who supplies'
" the family at Minerva-house " with pota-
toes, and the chairman who wheels the delicate

lady at " Sion CAtage" through the promenade.
You will find the abodes of these voters, (and they
form a very large proportion of the electorate) in the
shuns of Cheltenham, should you ever penetrate into
their recesses,—in the back streets behind the perizt:
church, towards the west. and 1 cl* t f
the R.";road "' e:anesea tog on o
_ ,ue East—q uarters in whichyon will
discover also multitudes of public houses end small beer
shops, the owners of which yon may conclude, with
tolerable fairness, to be all, at an election time, look-
ing out for their own interests. -

In 1841 the scenes of drunkenness and debauchery
which were rife in the lower districts were sufficient
to drive many of the respectable residents from home
to escape the annoyances of such electioneering orgies.
It is on record in one of the reports, on the PIC( l'ent
authority of a resident physician, that at this election
"one poor man was so debauched from drink that he
got into a scrape and lost both his eyes by it. He is
now a living monument of those disgraceful puts ices."
But, beyond extensive treating, we do cot know that
there were any practices in 1841, which could fairly
have been made the subject at complaint. The parties,
in fact, were not sufficiently close to render bribery
necessary, Mr. Berkeley belting his competitor by
in votes, the numbers being—for the successful can-
didate, 735; for Mr. Gardner, 620.
We have thus for the third time seen the Berkeley
interest paramount at Cheltenham, and the first member
for the borough successful on the poll. But the
reader will have seen from the numberspollod on this
occasion that that interest, though prominent for up-
wards of nine years, bad certainly not kept pace with
the increasing power of the other side. Mr. Berkeley
polled 100 more in 1841 than he had polled in 1817 ;
but the tory candidate had polled an addititional 300.
The liberals found the muse of this in the local influence