Now! Then! Having paid £1.5M (modern) in bribes to voters, William Wilberforce is elected MP for Hull

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William Wilberforce was born at Hull, on the 24th of August, 1759. His father, a merchant of that town, traced his descent from a family which had for many generations possessed a large estate at Wilberfoss, in the East Riding of the county of York. From that place was derived the name which the taste or the caprice of his later progenitors moulded into the form in which it was borne by their celebrated descendant. His mother was nearly allied to many persons of consideration, among whom may be numbered the present Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Winchester, and the members of that great London banking house of which Lord Carrington was formerly the head…

The father of William Wilberforce died before his son had completed his tenth year, and the ample patrimony which he then inherited was afterwards largely increased on the death of a paternal uncle, to whose guardianship his childhood was committed…

[But] ‘If I had staid with my uncle I should probably have been a bigoted, despised Methodist.’ His mother’s earlier sagacity foresaw what her son’s later experience discovered, and by her he was withdrawn from Wimbledon, and initiated into the amusements and luxuries of his native city.

The escape from methodism, bigotry, and contempt, was complete. The youth sang, danced, and feasted with the wealthier inhabitants of Hull, endured their card parties, and admired their strolling players; and, lest these spells should be too weak to cast out the Whitfield spirit from his mind, he was committed by the same maternal prescience to the care of a professional exorcist of such demons. He was a sound and well-beneficed divine, a polished gentleman, an elegant scholar, and master of the endowed grammar school of Pocklington. To him his pupil was indebted for some general knowledge of polite literature, and for an intimate acquaintance with the best dinner tables in that part of the county of York. From this easy thrall he passed, at the age of seventeen, to St. John’s College, Cambridge…

No better choice could have been made, if the object of his residence at the University had been to repress any aspirations towards scholarship of a higher order. His companions were hard-drinking licentious youths, whose talk was even worse than their lives. His teachers did their best to make and to keep him idle. The single problem proposed for his solution was, “Why so rich a man should trouble himself with fagging?’ and no Johnian Archimedes could find the answer. Euclid and Newton were abandoned for whist, and Thucydides for such other pastimes as collegiate dulness loves best. With a great Yorkshire pie crowning his table, and with wit, drollery, and song ever flowing from his lips, the child of fortune passed through his academical course, the centre of that never-failing crowd, whose aim it is to eat without cost, and to be amused without effort.

That complete and generous education which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war, was not to be acquired under such teachers or among such associates. Yet scarcely had Mr. Wilberforce shaken off that alliance, than he entered on one of the noblest and most difficult of those offices. Within six weeks from the sumptuous celebration of the day on which he attained his majority, he found himself, by the expenditure among the electors of Hull of more than 8000l., their representative in the House of Commons.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

Wilberforce’s sons’ excuse is the customary one of corrupt politicians, that they were all at it – generalised fraudulent elections, rather than individual electoral fraud, were to blame:

[O]n the 11th of September he was engaged in all the bustle of a sharp contest. Against him were arrayed the interest of Lord Rockingham, the most powerful nobleman in the county; that of Sir George Savile, its wealthy and respected representative, himself a frequent resident at Hull; and that of government, always strong at a sea-port. To these he could oppose nothing but the personal influence and independent character of a young man of twenty. Yet such was the command he had established over the affections of his townsmen, that, at the close of the poll, he numbered singly as many votes as his opponents had received together. The numbers were,

Lord Robert Manners 673
David Hartley 453
William Wilberforce 1126

This election cost him between £ 8000 and £9000.

By long-established custom, the single vote of a resident elector was rewarded with a donation of two guineas; four were paid for a plumper; and the expenses of a freeman’s journey from London averaged £10 a piece. The letter of the law was not broken, because the money was not paid until the last day on which election petitions could be presented. But the more matured judgment of Mr Wilberforce condemned the custom to which he now conformed; and rather than so enter parliament, with his later principles, he has declared that he would have remained always a private man (Wilberforce 1839).

As I don’t think Wilberforce actually said, “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”

The Bank of England’s inflation calculator translates the range £8000-9000 in 1780 to £1,468,444.44-£1,652,000.00 in 2020.

This was a recurring expense:

Wilberforce’s account with Smith, Payne and Smith’s bank suggests that the 1784 election cost him £8,800 of which he had to meet all but £1,000 himself (Ward 1989).

Although Wilberforce subsequently became an abolitionist, his victory over Hartley weakened the cause in the Commons:

David Hartley, then a member of parliament for Hull, and the son of Dr. Hartley who wrote the Essay on Man, found it impossible any longer to pass over without notice the case of the oppressed Africans. He had long felt for their wretched condition, and, availing himself of his legislative situation, he made a motion in the House of Commons, “That the Slave Trade was contrary to the laws of God, and the rights of men.” In order that he might interest the members as much as possible in his motion, he had previously obtained some of the chains in use in this cruel traffic, and had laid them upon the table of the House of Commons. His motion was seconded by that great patriot and philanthropist, Sir George Saville (Clarkson 1839).

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Original

William Wilberforce was born at Hull, on the 24th of August, 1759. His father, a merchant of that town, traced his descent from a family which had for many generations possessed a large estate at Wilberfoss, in the East Riding of the county of York. From that place was derived the name which the taste or the caprice of his later progenitors moulded into the form in which it was borne by their celebrated descendant. His mother was nearly allied to many persons of consideration, among whom may be numbered the present Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Winchester, and the members of that great London banking house of which Lord Carrington was formerly the head…

The father of William Wilberforce died before his son had completed his tenth year, and the ample patrimony which he then inherited was afterwards largely increased on the death of a paternal uncle, to whose guardianship his childhood was committed…

[But] ‘If I had staid with my uncle I should probably have been a bigoted, despised Methodist.’ His mother’s earlier sagacity foresaw what her son’s later experience discovered, and by her he was withdrawn from Wimbledon, and initiated into the amusements and luxuries of his native city.

The escape from methodism, bigotry, and contempt, was complete. The youth sang, danced, and feasted with the wealthier inhabitants of Hull, endured their card parties, and admired their strolling players; and, lest these spells should be too weak to cast out the Whitfield spirit from his mind, he was committed by the same maternal prescience to the care of a professional exorcist of such demons. He was a sound and well-beneficed divine, a polished gentleman, an elegant scholar, and master of the endowed grammar school of Pocklington. To him his pupil was indebted for some general knowledge of polite literature, and for an intimate acquaintance with the best dinner tables in that part of the county of York. From this easy thrall he passed, at the age of seventeen, to St. John’s College, Cambridge…

No better choice could have been made, if the object of his residence at the University had been to repress any aspirations towards scholarship of a higher order. His companions were hard-drinking licentious youths, whose talk was even worse than their lives. His teachers did their best to make and to keep him idle. The single problem proposed for his solution was, “Why so rich a man should trouble himself with fagging?’ and no Johnian Archimedes could find the answer. Euclid and Newton were abandoned for whist, and Thucydides for such other pastimes as collegiate dulness loves best. With a great Yorkshire pie crowning his table, and with wit, drollery, and song ever flowing from his lips, the child of fortune passed through his academical course, the centre of that never-failing crowd, whose aim it is to eat without cost, and to be amused without effort.

That complete and generous education which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war, was not to be acquired under such teachers or among such associates. Yet scarcely had Mr. Wilberforce shaken off that alliance, than he entered on one of the noblest and most difficult of those offices. Within six weeks from the sumptuous celebration of the day on which he attained his majority, he found himself, by the expenditure among the electors of Hull of more than 8000l., their representative in the House of Commons.

598 words.