of the Government. On this subject Lowe made a very stirring speech on behalf of his party (February 27); but the Government were beaten a few days afterwards on Cobden's motion by a majority of 16, and Parliament was dissolved. It was a remarkable general election, and proved, if nothing else, the wonderful popularity of Lord Palmerston with all classes of his countrymen. In the eyes of all Englishmen he appeared as the one national patriotic statesman who could uphold our honour abroad, and who loved England (as indeed he did) with every fibre of his being. Probably no public man has ever been so popular in this country as Lord Palmerston was at this time and down to his death. We all know how the great radical constituencies turned round upon their favourite representatives for voting against the Government. Cobden, Bright, Milner Gibson, and others hardly less prominent, were cast out with indignity. All this is a matter of general history, but this election of 1857 was also in its way an epoch, and a most unpleasant one, in the public life of Lord Sherbrooke. He again presented himself for re-election at Kidderminster, and was again opposed by the same local candidate, Mr. Boycott. His address to his constituents at the Music Hall on March 10 was the first ministerial utterance on Lord Palmerston's appeal to the country after the recent adverse vote in the Commons. Like his speech in Parliament it was, in our slang, decidedly jingoistic; Lowe thoroughly believed in Palmerston's Chinese policy, and had not the slightest regard for the Radicals and Peelites who, by their defection, had enabled the Tories to outvote the Government in the House. There can be no doubt that Kidderminster, like other popular constituencies, was altogether in favour of Lord Palmerston's policy; in fact, the polling showed this clearly enough. But before Lowe's advent the borough had been greatly demoralised by a long and systematic course of bribery. From the first he had set his face firmly against all such corruption, and the mob resented it. As Canon Melville, who

narrowly watched these Kidderminster contests, epigrammatically expresses it: 'Lowe appealed to rectitude and reason; the mob desired the bribe and the beer-barrel.' When the poll was declared--Lowe 234, Boycott 147-the fury of the angry crowd and its leaders broke forth; stone-throwing was freely indulged in by large numbers of more or less drunken rowdies who were not electors, and some of whom, it was said, had been imported for this express purpose from outside. Robert Lowe during most of the day was at Blakebrook, the principal polling-booth, and towards the close of the poll he and his friends were savagely attacked by some three or four thousand roughs, who directed a volley of stones and brickbats at the booth. The mayor was repeatedly requested to read the Riot Act, but as he had only a small body of local police and a few special constables who had been sworn in on the previous day, he hesitated to do so. Every moment things looked more serious; several persons were severely wounded, the few police were brutally assaulted, and the mob prepared to rush the booth. Lowe and his friends, seeing that matters had reached a desperate pass, made a rush for it and attempted to get back to the town, having special constables on each side of them. The road by which they passed ran between raised banks, from which the mob were pelting them; the women, more savage than the men, having stones in their aprons and in the corners of their shawls. Many electors and respectable inhabitants were hit and felled to the ground. As the procession neared the residence of the Rev. J. G. Sheppard, of the Grammar School, Lowe was violently struck on the head by a brickbat. In the face of this howling and now murderous mob, Mr. Sheppard, with great courage, threw open his side gate, and managed to drag Mr. Lowe, who was literally streaming with blood, into his garden, which was surrounded by a high wall; others of the party who were also badly wounded contriving to follow. They had a hard struggle to close and fasten the gate, but at last succeeded, and Lowe was taken

Inside the house, and as soon as possible a surgeon was sent for.

An eyewitness gives a truly appalling account of the scene. The stones, he says, rattled off the hats and shoulders of Mr. Lowe and his party, after they emerged from the booth, like hailstones from a roof. They ran the gauntlet for some 250 yards, losing one of their number at every stride; those who fell were savagely kicked, and several of the policemen were disabled in rescuing them. Although Mr. Lowe was bleeding, his white hair dabbled in blood, they kept pelting him with cowardly ferocity and the most horrible imprecations. Of the nine of us who got into Mr. Sheppard's house, seven were bleeding badly, and those of our friends who were in the road were maltreated, followed into the houses where they took refuge, and kicked, and the windows smashed where they were thought to be.'

These degrading scenes took place on the Saturday afternoon, but Lowe was not able to be removed from Kidderminster for some days; the local surgeon discovered that he had sustained a fracture of the right parietal bone of the skull in addition to a lacerated scalp wound, and two severe contusions. on the side of the head; and he was for the time quite prostrated by loss of blood. Meantime the insensate crowd kept up their rioting, some yelling round Mr. Sheppard's house, others going to the Albert Inn, whither they thought he had made his escape, and there they smashed every window in front of the building. Later the mayor telegraphed to Birmingham for a troop of hussars, and as soon as they arrived the Riot Act was read, and the streets cleared. A number of the rioters were apprehended, but came off with trivial fines. Whether because of the skilful defence of Mr. (afterwards Baron) Huddlestone, or because they were felt to be merely a small handful out of a large number equally concerned in the rioting, it is hard to say. One of the newspapers (April 3, 1857), published a long letter signed, 'An Old

Reformer-adding, ‘A surviving member of the Society of the Friends of the People '-in which the writer not only commented in a most straightforward manner on this election riot, but furnished a very singular history of the parliamentary representation of Kidderminster. It would appear that from 1832 to the advent of Robert Lowe, twenty years afterwards, treating and wholesale bribery were looked on as the prime essentials in every election contest. Thus, he says in 1841, Mr. Sampson Ricardo polled 200 votes, for which he spent in the borough within a week the sum of 4,000l., while his successful rival, who polled 212 votes, was even more lavish. He then gives an account of Lowe's successful contests, and states that to his knowledge they were won without treating, bribery, or any form of corruption. But this reformation was naturally resented by the eighty-four publicans and the sixty-six beer-shop keepers, to say nothing of their thirsty clients. Further, it may be remembered Lowe had opposed some Beer Bill in the House, while his pointed remarks on the malt tax and the brewing interest were not likely to be forgotten at election time in a borough blessed with such a superfluity of pothouses.

The writer concludes: I have no personal knowledge of Mr. Lowe. I only respect him as a rising and remarkable public man, of distinguished talents and accomplishments. I freely admit that Kidderminster has electorally redeemed its political character by the election of such a man; but I have simply recorded facts, as illustrative of the social condition of the non-electors and as startling proofs that the upper and middle classes of Kidderminster, and all our manufacturing and rural districts, must combine to raise the moral and intellectual principles and the habits of the people-to enhance their physical comforts and enjoyments—and to teach them to know and to value their own better interests. No stone ought to be left unturned to detect the instigators. If impunity is to follow such lawless and barbarous acts, the

repetition of them is certain. Your contemporary, the Examiner, remarking on the magisterial laches in fines of some of the convicted rioters of one shilling each, well observes: "If these be specimens of Kidderminster justice, let us not be astonished at Kidderminster outrages." Mr. Lowe may have his head broken again on the popular idea that he has brains to spare.'

Mr. Lowe

This Kidderminster riot was the only serious disturbance that occurred at the general election of 1857. It was an outbreak of mere brutal rowdyism, and had no political significance whatever. The distinguished man, a rising and trusted Minister of the Crown, whom these deluded and probably drunken wretches had tried to kill, was then altogether on the popular side; it had, indeed, fallen to his lot to be the first member of the Palmerston Government to expound and uphold the policy of his chief, which the country at this election so emphatically endorsed. Naturally, therefore, these riots and this murderous assault on Mr. Lowe and his friends were regarded by every decent inhabitant as a disgrace to Kidderminster. An address was drawn up and subscribed by the respectable townsfolk, Liberal and Conservative, expressing their profound indignation at the conduct of the mob, and their sympathy for the sufferings of their respected representative. To this address Robert Lowe sent the following reply.

To Mr. J. Kiteley, Mayor of Kidderminster, and 314 other Gentlemen signing an Address to me.

Gentlemen, I thank you cordially for the genuine expression of your sentiments and sympathy which you have placed in my hands, the more valuable because based on your conviction that nothing has emanated from me calculated to provoke the slightest ill-will or to irritate or excite the humblest individual. I should indeed have been inexcusable had it been otherwise, for, with the certainty of success, it was my interest, as well as my duty, to avoid all occasion of offence to opponents whom I might one day not unreasonably hope