Walter Bagehot had, for some years, been keen to enter the parliamentary arena. There were some possibilities, such as being adopted in 1860 as the Liberal candidate for the proposed London University seat, but nothing came of it. After refusing an invitation in 1865 to become Dudley’s Liberal candidate, he did try at Manchester that year, but, despite a letter of support from William Gladstone, he campaigned poorly and withdrew before the election.
In late December 1861 he told his wife, Eliza, that, despite the nearby Bridgwater constituency’s notorious reputation for electoral corruption, he wished to become its MP. His chance to stand in his ‘dream seat’ eventually came in a by-election caused by the unseating of one of its two MPs, the Tory, Henry Westropp, in April 1866. Westropp had topped the two-member poll at the general election the previous year, but a House of Commons Committee found him guilty of corrupt practices, and voided his election.
The first hint is in Eliza’s diary entry of 3 May 1866: “Walter saw Mr Brand [presumably Sir Henry Brand, Liberal chief whip and future Speaker of the House of Commons] & settled to be the liberal candidate at forthcoming election for Bridgwater.” In 1869, Walter said the first approach was by three senior Liberals visiting him at his London home very soon after Westropp had been unseated. Because of Bridgwater’s electoral notoriety, he had already consulted his solicitor, George Robins, about the matter. One scholar of Bridgwater’s electoral history of that period commented that “given Bagehot’s background, it is a mystery” that he was not approached for the 1865 general election as Bagehot was “an ideal candidate for Bridgwater.”
Over the following weeks, Eliza’s diary records Walter’s progress towards standing, including receiving two deputations from Bridgwater on 12 and 14 May. At the latter meeting, he “gave his answer, promising to come forward as the liberal candidate for B’water, whenever the writ is issued, but not before.”
On Sunday 27 May, Bridgwater’s Liberal MP, Alexander Kinglake called “to tell Walter he believed the writ for Bridgwater will be issued this week.” The writ for the by-election was duly issued in the Commons on Thursday 31 May, after an unsuccessful attempt by some MPs to have a select committee set up to examine alleged corrupt practices at Bridgwater elections. Walter went down to the House to check that it was being issued, and the following day, Friday 1 June, he went to Bridgwater to begin his campaign.
He left London at 2pm by train and arrived at 7, where, as he later described it, he “was received here, of course, in the usual tumultuous manner according to the habit of this place.” According to Eliza’s diary, “he was met by 4000 people, farmers & 4 grey horses etc, & addressed the people from the carriage on the Cornhill.” His speech was brief, optimistically predicting that the large, welcoming crowd “augers well [and] betokens a coming triumph.” He urged his supporters to “fight the contest honestly and well”, echoing his previous insistence to his main backers on a ‘pure’ campaign, and assured the crowd that he was “a true and sincere Liberal.”
The next day, he called on the prominent Liberals of the borough, and made his first major speech that evening, to a party meeting at the Assembly Rooms, George Street. He confirmed his support for the current Liberal Government, headed by the Prime Minister, Earl Russell, and the Chancellor, William Gladstone, and stressed his, and his family’s, commercial connections with Bridgwater, contrasting them with the Scottish background of his Tory opponent, George Patton.
He shamelessly played the ‘English card’, criticising Patton as a Scots lawyer: “I wonder very much that the party which possesses such zeal for old English institutions cannot find an English representative… Being represented by a Scotchman is being represented by a man unknown. He knows nothing of you, and you can find out very little about him…. Scotland, you will feel, is not the same sort of place as Bridgwater. There is a perfectly different system of laws there. He can’t help you with English laws …”
On Sunday 3 June, he went to church with the Corporation of Bridgwater in the morning, before paying a quick visit to Langport afternoon for two hours. Monday was spent canvassing in Bridgwater all day, as was Tuesday, followed by a party meeting in the evening at the Assembly Rooms.
Wednesday 6 June was the great day of the nomination hustings in front of the Market House. Walter responded to criticism of his attacks on Patton as a Scot, denying that he was anti-Scottish, merely claiming that local candidates were better than those from afar. The main thrust of his brief address was the ongoing parliamentary battles over the latest Reform Bill to extend the franchise: “we are for a living Constitution; but our opponents would hand down to their descendants a mummy Constitution.”
The event was a rowdy and at times violent occasion, and, though the Liberals were confident of victory, a show of hands fell in Patton’s favour. Eliza dryly remarked in her diary: “The Mayor a Tory.” All depended now on the poll itself the following day, Thursday 7 June.
Walter had a clear early lead among the very small electorate, but this faded as the day wore on, as recorded by Eliza: “8.15 am Bagehot 29, Patton 14, 10.15 am Bagehot 230 Patton 197, Tie at 1.15 291, 4 pm Patton 301 Bagehot 294.” So, he had lost by 7 votes. A crestfallen Bagehot briefly addressed the crowd, conceding defeat and hoping it would not be long before the Liberals could retake the seat. He then returned to his family home at Herd’s Hill, outside Langport, and went back the following morning to Bridgwater, spending the day there.
Ironically, the following month saw another by-election opportunity at Bridgwater, when Patton was made Lord Advocate in the new Tory government, and so had to stand for re-election, as was the practice then. However, Bagehot declined to stand, due to his unwillingness to allow any electoral malpractice by his supporters; he emphasised that he had wanted his June campaign to be ‘pure’.
The full story of the shady dealings at the June by-election emerged 3 years later when there was a Royal Commission into Bridgwater’s endemic electoral corruption. Appearing before the inquiry on Wednesday 13 October 1869, its 41st sitting day, Walter admitted that, though he did not participate in any wrongdoing at the June 1866 by-election, his election team did, and he had chosen, following legal advice, to reimburse personally the £800 spent illegally as the only honourable option. His fear of a repetition of this unlawful conduct by his supporters was why he would not stand again at Bridgwater. His evidence appeared to reveal him as being at the very least naïve, careless and ignorant, but not intentionally criminal or corrupt. Overall, it must have been a gruelling session for him, though Eliza’s very brief diary entry simply stated: “Walter gave evidence before the Bridgwater Commissioners who were very civil.”
When the inquiry’s report was finally published early the following year, it was clearly damning against Bagehot. It stated in reference to that June 1866 by-election, “We find … that Walter Bagehot and George Patton, Esquires, the candidates, were privy and assenting to some of the corrupt practices extensively prevailing thereat.” His name appeared in the accompanying Schedule among a long list of ‘bribers’ at that election.
This indictment did not seem to have any long-term negative consequences for Bagehot, and his chroniclers and supporters have tended to gloss over the incident and its outcome. However, a later critic of his, the Langport-based poet, CH Sisson, remarked in his 1972 book on Bagehot, that the whole 1860s Bridgwater experience was “not a happy occasion for him. Practice proved to be less exhilarating than theory,” a conclusion with which it is hard to disagree. Despite his many influential articles on politics and elections – in 1866 he was in the midst of writing the series of articles that became, the following year, his classic The English Constitution – his travails at and after the 1866 Bridgwater election, and his other attempts to become an MP, made it clear that Bagehot was not cut out for parliamentary politics. Crucially, he was not a good public speaker before large audiences, at a time when elections became more democratic, requiring more intensive direct campaigning of the growing electorate.
Though Bagehot would probably have accepted this analysis, he still retained some yearnings for representing Bridgwater in Parliament, as he revealed in a 13 December 1870 paper to the Metaphysical Society, at the Grosvenor Hotel, London, admitting to his audience that this feeling was ‘nonsense’ and an ‘absurdity’:
“Some years ago I stood for a borough in the West of England, and after a keen contest was defeated by seven. Almost directly afterwards there was accidentally another election, and, as I would not stand, another candidate of my own side was elected, and I of course ceased to have any hold upon the place, or chance of being elected there. But for years I had the deepest conviction that I should be “Member for Bridgwater”; and no amount of reasoning would get it out of my head. The borough is now disfranchised; but even still, if I allow my mind to dwell on the contest, – if I think of the hours I was ahead in the morning, and the rush of votes at two o’clock by which I was defeated, – and even more, if I call up the image of the nomination day, with all the people’s hands outstretched, and all their excited faces looking the more different on account of their identity in posture, the old feeling almost comes back upon me, and for a moment I believe that I shall be Member for Bridgwater.”