Beschreibung:

Wordsworth, William WESTMORLAND ELECTION. TO THE INDEPENDENT FREEHOLDERS OF THE COUNTY OF WESTMORLAND. KENDAL: AIREY AND BELLINGHAM, PRINTERS, (1818). Small folio, broadside. First edition. A hitherto unrecorded Wordsworth broadside, signed at the end, "A Friend to Consistency," and dated January 30, 1818. This is Wordsworth's first contribution to the debate surrounding the election in Westmorland. The text of this letter has long been known from its appearance in a local newspaper, the Kendal Chronicle, for Jan. 31, 1818; a reference appears in Wordsworth's correspondence to the letter also having been printed as a "handbill," but until now, no copy has surfaced. In 1818, Henry Brougham (later Lord Brougham) came forward to challenge Lord Lonsdale's practice of nominating the two county members of Parliament for Westmorland; these were, in the election of that year, his sons William, Viscount Lowther, and Colonel Henry Lowther. Wordsworth became entirely absorbed by the election, and his poetry came to a standstill. As a local official who owed his post to Lowther patronage, his position was delicate, but his efforts to remain anonymous were wholly ineffective and he was soon identified by Brougham's supporters as the prime mover against them. He knew he had left himself open to accusations of being a bought man, and an establishment spy. As he wrote to Lonsdale, "I have the honour of being distinguished by the special hatred of the enemy; and obloquy is showered upon me from the rabble of all quarters." On March 23, when Brougham first made his public entry into Kendal, supported by a considerable mob, his speech was almost entirely directed against Wordsworth and his articles in the local papers. In the ensuing months, Wordsworth continued to do anything he could think of to advance the Lowther cause. He suggested to Lord Lonsdale the creation of new freefolds, to be given to supporters, and the outright purchase of the Kendal Chronicle, whose stance seemed dangerously radical. In May, entirely through Wordsworth's influence, a new paper was begun, the Westmorland Chronicle, with Thomas De Quincey as editor. There was, of course, an element of myopia in Wordsworth's obsessive loyalty to the Lowther cause. Brougham was by no means as black as Wordsworth painted him, and he was supported by many whom Wordsworth could not but respect, such as William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, whose anti-slavery crusade Brougham had supported in Parliament. According to Clarkson, Wordsworth's intervention in the election quickly became a talking-point in London, and he asked his wife to write, "to warn William lest he be ignorant of the predicament in which he stood." Catherine Clarkson was in fact a close friend of Dorothy, and she confessed herself appalled at the extent to which the Wordsworths had become "so Torified." For all those close to Wordsworth, the worst effect of the campaign was the neglect of his poetry. On the morning of June 27, a day or two before polling began, two young men called at his house, hoping to see him. They were Charles Armitage Brown and his friend John Keats When Keats discovered the reason for Wordsworth's absence, he wrote to his brother: "What do you think of that, Wordsworth versus Brougham!! Sad -- sad -- sad -- and yet the family (the Lowthers) has been his friend always. What can we say?" Wordsworth and Keats never saw each other again. This early broadside deals specifically with the question of electors splitting, or "plumping," their votes, i.e. giving one vote to one of the Lowther candidates, and one vote to Brougham. Wordsworth argues that this would be self-contradictory, and dishonorable, as the two parties were "not merely different, but of opposite political principles." Accompanying the broadside are nine others, all from the opposition, which relate to the same election; one of them is a direct attack upon Wordsworth. None of the broadsides is recorded by the NSTC, nor is any of them