making common cause—seeing they had no chance of success would unite to put Loyd before Thomson; but on Friday Thomson kept gaining throughout the day, and at the close of the poll had obtained a majority of 237 over Loyd.
The numbers then stood thus:—
| Philips | 2,923 |
| Thomson | 2,069 |
| Loyd | 1,832 |
| Hope | 1,560 |
| Cobbett | 1,305 |
Mr. Thomson, who had never offered himself as a candidate for Manchester—never even said that be would sit for Manchester if elected—was returned for Dover also. He chose to sit for the larger constituency. The honour of a double return—for South Lancashire and Wolverhampton—was conferred at another period on Mr. Villiers, and at another, the West Riding and Stockport, upon Mr. Cobden. Mr. Cobbett was peculiarly fortunate at Oldham the majority of his constituents were Cobbetites; "he stood in coalition with Mr. John Fielden, a Cobbettite, and with the additional influence which great wealth usually gives; his opponents were Mr. B. Heywood Bright, a mere whig, who had sought the place in all England the most unlikely to favour such political principles, and Mr. Burge, the Attorney–General for Jamaica, who strove to get into Parliament expressly to support interests of the the West India slave owners. A fifth candidate, Mr. George Stephens, offered himself only that he might have an opportunity of exposing the slave system and its advocate. At the close of the poll the numbers were:—Fielden, 675; Cobbett, 644; B. H. Bright, 153; Burge, 101 and Stephens, 3.
At Bury no tory offered himself, and the contest lay between Mr. Walker, a whig-radical, and Mr. Edmund Grundy, a radical, both of them inhabitants of the borough. The election was in favour of the former, who had 304
