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with scorn and ridicule. At all such places, the one fact I have named carried the day. Among various other seaport representatives who held Free-trade principles, I lost my seat for the Tynemouth boroughs; at least, I found such a phalanx of Shipowners arrayed against me, that I should have had a great struggle to retain it.[1] However, within a week, I found another seat at Sunderland, and, though the bulk of the Shipowners there, too, were opposed to my views, I was returned over my Conservative opponent (the late George Hudson) by a very large majority.[2] But it fared, otherwise, with many better men who lost their seats and did not find others.
- ↑ I had served my constituents, I thought, well and faithfully for two Parliaments. I had fought to obtain reciprocity from foreign nations, before we repealed our Navigation Laws, the only time when we could have had any hope of obtaining it unless the statesmen of other nations became as enlightened as our own; and, having been defeated, I was then doing my utmost to assist in obtaining for them from our own Legislature, relief from the unjust and oppressive burdens with which they had been saddled during a period of protection; consequently, I could not but feel keenly the determined opposition which they, the Shipowners—men of my own class—for whom I had worked so strenuously, had organised against my return to Parliament.
- ↑ The numbers were, Fenwick, 1527; Lindsay, 1292; Hudson, 790. The contest was between Mr. Hudson and myself; but, though Mr. Hudson, better known as the "Railway King" during the fleeting days of his transitory power, was a strong Conservative, he had done so much for Sunderland through the railways which he brought into the town, and the magnificent docks constructed entirely through his influence, that I felt regret, at having been the instrument of his political expulsion from the representation of a port, where he had rendered such marked and valuable services. But I fear it is too true, that popular constituencies are sometimes as inconsistent as they are fickle. Henry Fenwick, whom Sunderland on that occasion, and deservedly so, returned at the head of the poll, and who was one of the best of members and the manliest of men, soon afterwards lost his seat, because the Government of the day, appreciating his many good qualities, had appointed him the Civil Lord of the Admiralty.
