Such are the general causes of ghosts, spirits, charms, miracles, and supernatural appearances. They all arise either from hallucinations of the mind or senses; from the mutual action of the natural, though invisible, powers of gaseous and ethereal fluids; from the delusions of ignorance, implicit faith, or the absence of all reasoning.
While occupied in these speculations, I arrived at the entrance of the populous, industrious, and opulent village of Wandsworth. A reader in the highlands of Scotland, in the mountains of Wales, or the wilds of Connaught, will startle when he hears of a village containing 5,644 inhabitants, and 2,020 houses, in which 620 families are returned as engaged in trade and manufactures. Yet, such are the overgrown villages round our overgrown metropolis. Even in this vicinity, Chelsea contains 18,262 inhabitants; Fulham 5,903; Clapham 5,083; Hammersmith 7,393; Kensington 10,886; Brentford, New and Old, 7,094; and Richmond 5,219. This village of Wandsworth, in truth, is of the size of most second-rate towns in distant counties, its main street, of compact and well-built houses, being half a mile in length, with several collateral ones a quarter of a mile. It also contains, or has in its vicinity, many considerable manufactories, which flourished exceedingly before the silly vanity of ambition and military parade led a nation of merchants to endeavour to dictate to their foreign customers, and forced them to subsist without their commodities! The manufactories of Wandsworth are created or greatly aided by the pure stream of the Wandle, and by the Surry iron rail-way, which runs from Croydon to a spacious and busy wharf, on the Thames at this place. They consist of dyers, calico-printers, oil-mills, iron-founderies, vinegar-works, breweries, and distilleries. I found leisure to inspect the two or three which were employed; and I felt renewed delight on witnessing at this place the economy of horse-labour on the iron rail-way. Yet a heavy sigh escaped me, as I thought of the inconceivable millions which have been spent about Malta, four or five of which might have been the means of extending double lines of iron rail-ways from London to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Holyhead, Milford, Falmouth, Yarmouth, Dover and Portsmouth! A reward of a single thousand would have supplied coaches, and other vehicles of various degrees of speed, with the best tackle for readily turning out; and we might, ere this, have witnessed our mail coaches running at the rate of ten miles an hour, drawn by a single horse, or impelled fifteen miles by Blenkinsop's steam-engine! Such would have been a legitimate motive for overstepping the income of a nation, and the completion of so great and useful a work would have afforded rational grounds for public triumph in general jubilees!
Wandsworth having been the once-famed scene of those humorous popular elections of a mayor, or member for Garrat; and the subject serving to illustrate the manners of the times, and abounding in original features of character, I collected among some of its elder inhabitants a variety of amusing facts and documents, relative to the eccentric candidates and their elections.
Southward of Wandsworth, a road extends nearly two miles to the village of Lower Tooting, and nearly midway are a few houses, or hamlet, by the side of a small common, called Garrat, from which the road itself is called Garrat Lane. Various encroachments on this common led to an association of the neighbours about three-score years since, when they chose a president, or mayor, to protect their rights; and the time of their first election, being the period of a new parliament, it was agreed that the mayor should be re-chosen after every general election. Some facetious members of the club gave, in a few years, local notoriety to this election; and, when party spirit ran high in the days of Wilkes and Liberty, it was easy to create an appetite for a burlesque election among the lower orders of the metropolis. The publicans at Wandsworth, Tooting, Battersea, Clapham, and Vauxhall, made a purse to give it character; and Mr. Foote rendered its interest universal, by calling one of his inimitable farces, "the Mayor of Garrat." I have indeed been told, that Foote, Garrick, and Wilkes, wrote some of the candidates' addresses, for the purpose of instructing the people in the corruptions which attend elections to the legislature, and of producing those reforms by means of ridicule and shame, which are vainly expected from solemn appeals of argument and patriotism.
Not being able to find the members for Garrat in Beatson's Political Index, or in any of the Court Calendars, I am obliged to depend on tradition for information in regard to the early history of this famous borough. The first mayor of whom I could hear was called Sir John Harper. He filled the seat during two parliaments, and was, it appears, a man of wit, for, on a dead cat being thrown at him on the hustings, and a bye-stander exclaiming that it stunk worse than a fox, Sir John vociferated, "that's no wonder, for you see it's a poll-cat." This noted baronet was, in the metropolis, a retailer of brick-dust; and, his Garrat honours being supposed to be a means of improving his trade and the condition of his ass, many characters in similar occupations were led to aspire to the same distinctions.
He was succeeded by Sir Jeffrey Dunstan, who was returned for three parliaments, and was the most popular candidate that ever appeared on the Garrat hustings. His occupation was that of buying OLD WIGS, once an article of trade like that in old clothes, but become obsolete since the full-bottomed and full-dressed wigs of both sexes went out of fashion. Sir Jeffrey usually carried his wig-bag over his shoulder, and, to avoid the charge of vagrancy, vociferated, as he passed along the streets, "old wigs;" but, having a person like Esop, and a countenance and manner marked by irresistible humour, he never appeared without a train of boys, and curious persons, whom he entertained by his sallies of wit, shrewd sayings, and smart repartees; and from whom, without begging, he collected sufficient to maintain his dignity of mayor and knight. He was no respecter of persons, and was so severe in his jokes on the corruptions and compromises of power, that, under the iron regime of Pitt and Dundas, when freedom was treason, and truth was blasphemy, this political punch, or street-jester, was prosecuted for using what were then called seditious expressions; and, as a caricature on the times, which ought never to be forgotten, he was in 1793 tried, convicted, and imprisoned! In consequence of this affair, and some charges of dishonesty, he lost his popularity, and, at the general election for 1796, was ousted by Sir Harry Dimsdale, muffin-seller, a man as much deformed as himself. Sir Jeffrey could not long survive his fall; but, in death as in life, he proved a satire on the vices of the proud, for in 1797 he died, like Alexander the Great, and many other heroes renowned in the historic page-of suffocation from excessive drinking!
Sir Harry Dimsdale dying also before the next general election, and no candidate starting of sufficient originality of character, and, what was still more fatal, the victuallers having failed to raise a PUBLIC PURSE, which was as stimulating a bait to the independent candidates for Garrat, as it is to the independent candidates for a certain assembly; the borough of Garrat has since remained vacant, and the populace have been without a professed political buffoon.
None but those who have seen a London mob on any great holiday can form a just idea of these elections. On several occasions, a hundred thousand persons, half of them in carts, in hackney-coaches, and on horse and ass-back, covered the various roads from London, and choaked up all the approaches to the place of election. At the two last elections, I was told, that the road within a mile of Wandsworth was so blocked up by vehicles, that none could move backward or forward during many hours; and that the candidates, dressed like chimney-sweepers on May-day, or in the mock-fashion of the period, were brought to the hustings in the carriages of peers, drawn by six horses, the owners themselves condescending to become their drivers!
Whether the effect of inculcating useful principles by means of these mock politicians, was compensated by the ridicule thrown on the sacred exertions of patriotism, may perhaps be doubted. These elections served, however, to keep alive the feelings of the people on public questions, and tended to increase those discussions and enquiries which support the arterial circulation of the body politic. The deadly plague of despotism, and the equally fatal disease of ministerial corruption, find victims of their influence only among people who are devoid of moral energies and public spirit, and whose stagnant and torpid condition generates morbid dispositions that invite, rather than resist, the attacks of any public enemy.
I am a friend, therefore, on principle, to the bustle and tumult of popular elections. They are the flint and steel, the animating friction, the galvanic energy, of society. Virtue alone can face them. Vice dreads them as it dreads the light. With uncourtly hands, they tear the mask from Hypocrisy; they arraign at the bar of public opinion, political Culprits, amenable to no other tribunal; and they probe to the quick, the seared consciences of Peculators and Oppressors. If the sycophants of courts, and the sophistical apologists of arbitrary power, should craftily urge that the people are sometimes misled by fraud and...
