The Express.
London, England, 1849-03-22 00:00:00

OUR REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM

SUNDERLAND.

building and other purposes this prom," le peculiarly
valuable, and hence, as we shall see, an influ-
ence in the affairs of Bunderlan which smiloary
circumstances would scarcely justify.
Sunderland, Bishop - Weir:south, and Moak-
Wearmouth, having, in 1832, a population of more
than 40,000, were constituted a borough, by the
Reform Art, under the designation of the borough
of Sunderland, with the following limits—" the
parish of Sunderland, and the several townships
of Bishesp•Wearameth, Bishop-Wearmouth-Panns,
Mouk-Wearmouth, Monk-Wearmorteh-Shore, end
Southefiek.” The number of registered voters in 1832
was 1,378. The population has since increased to
nearly 80,000, and the electorate, were the register
complete, might now be swollen to 3,300.
The first election which occurred in the newly en-
franchised borough is the key to almost all that has
subsequently happened. It presented Tay peculiar
features. Sunderland is a town in which commercial
transactions are, to a very large eaten., represented by
bills. The celebrateu question, " What is a pound ?"
receives practicslly in Sunderland a ve7 different
arawer to that which the propounder himself afforded.
Tne consequence of this is that the influence of the
different local banks is unusually great—or rather, we
should sty, his been, for several of them heave
lately fallen, hearing down with them half the paper
fortunes of the people. Sir William :Chaytor, who,
in 1832, was a- the heed of the bucking cornezion in
Sunderland, became one candidate for its representa-
tion. He was regarded as an "accommodating"
man, and comequintly received considerable support.
But" the bank " was not by any means the only
powerful influence in Sunderland at the time. From
any commanding point of view at Bishop-Wear-
mouth you may me for away across a lire of black
and &eery country, void of herb or foliage, or tree
er flower—far away, when the smoke from factories
and the glare of fires at the pits' months
permit you, you may see an Oasis in th's coaly
region—a spot that looks cool, and green, and richly
timbered, a high bill, crowned with lofty trees, among
which there rive now a mess:ye column visible to all
the count, y round. This place is Lambton—tbe
columns memorial to the late Earl of Durham. Reeund
tt e base of the hill r n which it stands darkly flows
the river Wear, on its way to Sunderland. It carries
with it all the way memorials of Lambton: " keels,"
as they are called in the nor:h, filled with
coals from the Lambtoa cedlicriee. At the river
side at Bishop-Wes:mouth lie dozens of vess-ls
ready to receive them. On the banks ere
erected the " Maths," to which the coals are also
brought by tramways fey m the pits to be at once dis-
charged, by a simple but curious mschincry, into the
ship's hold. The Lambton collieries, in fec., give ma-
p' ment in one way er another to a very large num-
ter of p op'e in the borough, and Lord Durham on its
enfranchisement thought he had some claim to a share
in eta representalion.

The candidate who took the field upon the Lamb-
ton interest was Captain the Hon. George Barring-
too, a grandson of Barrington, Bishop of Dur-
ham, and a lord of the Admiralty under Heti Grey's
administration. As an official exercising Admiralty
patronage, it was thought at the Treasury that Capt.
Barrington would lee eve support from many voters
in a sea-port town. The good old Treasury elec-
tirmeering rules were, however, by no means applica-
ble to the new boroughs of 1832. The shipowners of
Sunderland, for example, properly judged that their
connexion lay much more with the trenchant, in the
City than with "my lords" at the Admiralty. They
accordingly sent to London and brought down a can-
didate of their own. He was a formidable one—Mr.
Alderman Wiliam Thompson, the chairman at
Lloyd's, the late representative for the Coy of Lon-
don, a thorough-going reformer, as hes votes and
speeches in thote days testified, a very recent Lord
Mayor, a wealthy merchant, and a popular mar.
TLe people could scarcely at the time have made a
b. HAI. choice. But all these were purely Sun-
derland candidates. There was still another interest
to slithery. Sir HedworthWilliamson, one of the mem-
bers for the c:mnly, had at the period very considera-
ble personal popularity ; and his property in Monk-
wearmouth gave him a great interest in the representa-
tion. He accordingly pu' forward his brother-in-law,
Mr. David Barclay the West India merchant, at the
head of the late firm of Barclay Brothers, who was
entirely unconnected with the borough personally, but
who was reputed of great wealth and of sound
liberal opinions. It will thus he seen that
there were four " Richmond. in the field."
Perhaps few boroughs at the time had, upon
the whole, a better choice. Their local interest
had its candidate in the person of their townsman
and banker, SirW. Chaytor; the coal interest, and the
marine, were united in the person of Lord Durham's
candidate, Cap'. Barrington; the shipping interest of
the town bad brought forward the Chairman of
Lloyd's; and a very popular and influential proprietor
was represented by a candidate who in many re-
spects was ntlexceplotable. All the candidates were
liberals, and professed themselves to be staunch to
their creed. Curiously enough they were each and
all of them extremely rich, and this turned out a very
unfortnr ate incident for Sunderland.

The elutes., at least as regarded three of tbe can-
didates, being likely to prove severe and doubtful, all
sorts of artifices were employed to obtain votes. The
first mistake made was the employment of a band by
lone of the candidates. The others followed the ex-
ample. The band of course were obliged to have a
meeting place. Their meeting place was a public-
house, and the frit nds of " the band " came there
to drink with them. One public-house could not
be used in this way without other publicans
ing the'rs to be used also. This i d to all the public-
houses being thrown open by one party cr another,
and to the town very speedily becoming the soene of the
wont sort cf electioneering debauchery.
Sir Wm. Chaytor and Capt. Barrington were re-
turned. As regarded the first the contest sever had
been doubtful, and the latter got in by more votes
than was expected. The numbers at this election
were for Chaytor, 696; Barrington, 525; Barclay, 402;
Thompson, 376. From first to lilt the contest was a
most exciting ore: it, unhappily, left a painful
record of the feet. Capt. Barrington suffered so
severely from its effects, that he was unable to fulfil
his duties as a member of the house of commons. In
1833 be was withdrawn altoacther from public life,
and a new election took place to supply the vacancy
occasioned by his resignalion of the seat.
Alderman Thompson and Mr. David Barclay, the
beaten candidates of the preceding year, both came
forward again. Another close and angry contest fol-
lowed—a contest by no means conducive to the purity
of Sunderland. On this occasion the Williamson in-
terest was worsted, and the Alderman was returned
by a major:ty of 18. This contest, like the preceding,
was one of personal feeling rather than of poli-
tical opinion, and was attended by considerable cost
to both the candidates.
Sir William Chaytor, who had been elected so
triumphantly in 1832, proved himself a very ineffi-
cient member. In the first place, he was disposed to
trim, which scarcely soi'ed Sunderland; in the
second, he gave no increased accommodation in con-
sequence of being elected, and those who bad vot d
for him in hopes that he would do so were conse-
quently disappointed and angry. The election
Iwhich occurred in '33 was, moreover, da-
maging to his interests by individually asso-
ciating two other candidates with strong parties of
the electorate. A popular man and a skilful electioneer° r
might have turned this much to his own advantage,
by getting the s end votes from the friends of b .th
parties; but Sir William Ciraytor was neither popular
nor skilful. Wh n the election of 1835 came, he was
very low on the poll indeed. and Alderman Thomp-
son and Mr. D. Barclay had an easy victory. The
numbers on this occasion were—fur Thompson,
844 ; Barclay, 709 ; Chaytor, only 389. Thus the two
great influences at Sunderland, so successful at the
first, were in three short years entirely supplanted by
those which originally had been defeaten.
It was in this pat lament that Alderman Thomrson
ratted —first joining with the dilly, and then openly
associating himself with the tories. Looking at the
political feeling in Sunderland, he would never, you
would have supposed, have stood a chance again.
But a tide was setting in in his favour, in consequence
of circumstances apart from politics and purely of a
local nature. About this time there was a great con-
test in Sunderland respecting the construction of some
docks. A scheme had been proposed for forming
docks on the south side of the River Wear,
the oast of which was to be defrayed by
what is called a " parsing toll* on "e snipping
bound along the coast. The pr.rject, it it could be
carried out, seemed likely to proves lucrative specu-
lation; and Sir Hedworth Williamson and others who
thought so, got up a rival scheme based upon the same

Far above the running titer, an iron arch spins the
Wear, within a quarter of a mile of its embowhure.
From the decks of ships that sail under it, the bridge
may look like a fixed black rainb)w over-head—so
great is ita span, so high its elevation, and so airy is
its aspect. This bridge—certainly one of the greatest
works of art in England—connects the parishes of
Bishop-Wearmou.h and Monk-Wearmotrh, the first
on the south, and the latter on the north of
the river side. Were we going to aFetk of
them ceclesiastically,we should have to point out how
the names of these parishes denote the tenure of
the soil. Bishop-Wearmouth is, for the most par,
held by copy of court roll under the Bishop of Dur-
ham's minor of Houghton-le-Spring ; Monk-Wear-
month, once the seat of a monastery, which had in
the Saxon days Ceolfrid for an abbot, and the Vene-
rable Bede fur an ornament, is still the propery of
the Dean and Chapter of Durham. Very little his
the church done for either place, and very glad are
the people to find pr)perty which they can hold un-
der any other landlords.
On both sides of the river there are spots over
which the church has no control. On the Bishop's
side there has grown up at the point of the river
nearest to the sea the overcrowded town of Sunder-
land, in recent days of such parr ount importance
in the locality as to be constituted a distinct
parish, and to give a general designation to the
surrounding district. On the Monk-Wearmouth
side the shore of the river and the sea is the property
at as individual—Sir Hedworth Williamson. For fillip

THE Farman, TEIT.REWAY EVENING, MARCH 22, 1849.