LIBERALISM IN THE BOROUGHS.
ITO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR:1
Szn,—I notice in your list of candidates that you leave out one for this borough, Captain Henry Cockayne Cust, Conservative. The Conservative candidates retired from the contest on Monday, November 16, and the two Liberal candidates were returned at nomination next day.
I may observe that this constituency has the honour of having returned two Liberals without a contest ; this fact is unique in English boroughs, where two Conservatives sat before. Cam- bridge returned two Liberals with a contest, under the same circumstances.
The tone of your article on the quality of the candidates sent by the present constituencies is hardly fair to the leaders of the Liberal party in such boroughs as this. We are compelled to fight with such weapons as we find to our hands, and in the case of our friend and representative Mr. Tollemache, we have a man who fought our battles in old times when he had nothing to gain and many friends to lose. If larger towns do not send a better class (in your sense) or a more advanced type—men of high cul- ture, freer from " Philistinism"—towns such as these may well be excused. We have been overridden by aristocratic power, by earls and baronets, by country gentlemen of large acres, and last (but not least) their stewards, who have sat upon us like a night- mare, and though we have wrestled and struggled for breath, it has but been our protest against the burden we could not lift. IVe have been glad to find representatives who felt as we felt, and who would truly answer to the word in its common-sense interpretation, in exchange for M.P.'s who represented houses, accommodation land, hovels, stables, and pigsties,—all sorts of faggot votes, by which this borough has been debauched in the times which will never rerun.
The truth is, we can only advance with our times,—and we " shopocrats," some of us readers of the Spectator also,--have some- thing due to us which you"are not always just enough to pay. Some
few of us have kept the Liberal cause alive under many difficulties —have hazarded and injured our business, and have fought against bitter local prejudices, as well as against pleasant neighbours. We
have had to bear the defection of loud-mouthed politicians when the strain came, and to put our feet down firmly in the struggle for intellectual political life, having only our faith to warm and cheer us far away from the many social pleasautnesses that
make up to the Londoner or the dwellers in large cities for the eclipse of his principles until better times come round.
This is only a justification, not a complaint.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Grantham, November 24, 1886. JOHN HAWKINS.
[If our correspondent had read both the articles in our last week's paper, he would scarcely have complained of our not giving the appreciation he justly claims for the Liberal " shopocrate."— ED. Spectator.]
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