HUMOURS OF A GENERAL ELECTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11538, 24 November 1900, Page 6 (Supplement)

HUMOURS OF A GENERAL ELECTION.

_ ■» A general election is a very serious tiling, no doubt, but, like everything else that is serious, it has its humorous side. The humour of politics is one of the subjects which journalism has somehow overlooked —a strange and surprising thing, seeing that politics is perhaps the most fruitful Held of all for real, healthy humour. What ;ould be wittier, for instance, than the act >f the voter who, when Fox applied to him for his vote, offered him a halter, which Fox handed back to him. saying that he could not take awav a family relic? Or where can purer fun be'found than in the story of the candidate who was led by a wag into promising that he would vote against the Ten Commandants? "Will Mr. Merry vote for an alteration in the Decalogue?" somebody called out at heckling time; and Mr. Merry, who had no idea what the Decalogue was, turned inquiringly to a treacherous friend. ' "It means flogging in the Army," the friend assured him: and Merry, with the confidence born of sincerity and conviction, declared that he would not only vote for an alteration of the Decalogue but for its total abolition. . Political repartee is a fine art which has fair play only at a general election. It is only in the enthusiasm of politics, that such a retort could be ventured upon as that of a Eeer's son at Greenwich, who, when asked y a merciless heckler what he would first take the diitv off if he were elected, replied: " Soap, you dirty rascal." And nothing but a political election could give us such a capital story as that which Mr. Birrell will never forget. The storv redounds to the credit of Mr. Erskine Wemyss, who was fighting Mr. Birrell when the present candidate for North-East Manchester was standing for West Fife. Mr. Wemyss had behind him all the local connection he needed, but Mr. Birrell had nothing but a tiny mosscovered tombstone to appeal to in this respect. But he made the best use he could of that, claiming what local interest he could on the ground that a distant relative had been buried in Abbotshall Churchyard. A heckler gave Mr. Erskine Wemyss his chance. "Aren't you trying to ride into Parliament on the backs of your father and grandfather?" he a:;ked, referring to a passage in the candidate's address which spoke sf his family's interest in the county. Quick is thought rose Mr. Wemyss with the words ready on his lips, " I would fifty times rather ride into Parliament on the back of my father and grandfather than on the tombs stone of my grandmother's second cousin!" And in spite of that brilliant retort Mr. Wemyss lost the seat. Brilliant retorts, unfortunately for the men who make them, do not win elections. Otherwise Sir George Sitwell would have won Scarborough in 1892, when, in answer to the Liberal appeal, "Vote for Rowntree and the flowing tide," he placarded the town with many-coloured Eosters, calling upon the people to " Vote for itwell and dam the flowing tide." Not that it is politics alone which win elections. Those who know anything of the wajTin which the election machine is driven know how many causes contribute to the making of Her Majesty's faithful Commons. M.P.'s are made and" lost in many ways. One who is dead now was made in a seaside town by a sudden illness and a magnificent will, both more sham than real. The Liberals had held the seat for a generation, and the Tory attack seemed hopeless. But there was much jingling of gold, and the talk of the town was that the new candidate would scatter wealth here, there, and everywhere, like another Hooley. Vague talk, however, never yet won an election, and it was necessary to give a definite turn to the general impression which had somehow been created. A friend of the candidate, whose wealth was said to be enormous, was taken ill at the principal hotel in the constituency just beiore the poll, and a few party leaders were called to witness his last will and testament. There were generous bequests to the seaside town, and it was remarked that no man ever fell so deep in love with a town in so short a time as the dying friend of this candidate. They know tetter now. The Liberals lost the seat, the new M.P. was chaired amid tremendous scenes, and for five years he spent a good deal of his time in blocking Bills in Parliament. But his friend recovered wonderfully after the poll, and lived to make another will, in which he managed to forget all about the town which sold itself for his bequests. This is how an M.P. was made at the general election of 1880. Here is a story of how one was unmade. He was a man of note in Lancashire, a life-long teetotaler and a Liberal, and he was fighting on the Liberal temperance platform in a south of England county. ' Nobody had any doubt of his winning; it was, in electioneering talk, a walk over. But an unexpected factor entered into the contest at the last hour. A cobbler set up cobbling in a. bathing van in the leading market town, to the mystification - of everybody but himself—and " those who knew." Those who knew were not surprised when the town was flooded with copies of a leaflet asking if it were true that the Liberal candidate had been convicted of drunkenness before the Liverpool magistrates on a given date. From the moment the leaflet api, ? eared the Liberal position was hopeless. he "news" flew north, south, east, and west of the constituency, and the lie was '¥}* half round that little world before Truth > had got its boots on. The cobbler lost the \ election for the teetotal M.P., and he had lost it so cleverly that he had kept within the four corners of the law. ; The bathing ;,' j, van was given as his address on the leaflets. v -y and before the Liberal candidate had realised jUF how matters stood the bathing" van was . . ' gone, and the crafty cobbler, having done his work, passed out of noli tics for ever—in that constituency. :■■'"'