200 APPENDIX. 



Whig candidates were returned, by a small majority, through the 

 corrupt influence of the Corporation, which is on parliamentary record. 

 Lord Althorp, in asking leave to bring in his celebrated Keform Bill, 

 referred in express terras to the corruption of the Nottingham Cor- 

 poration in creating mushroom voters for election purposes. 



Fox's famoutrf Westminster contest was scarcely more fertile in stirring 

 and piquant scenes than Assheton Smith's two arduous contests at 

 Nottingham. 



In a political squib, published at Nottingham in 1819, entitled 

 " The Entertaining Performances of the Election Jugglers," Mr. 

 Smith fills the character of the Pilgrim Assheton Smithomas, Esq. 

 (an unsuccessful candidate), who, in a farcical burletta, called "The 

 Scrutiny," acts the part of a centaur, said to be imported from the 

 fens of Lincolnshire. " This extraordinary creature," says the author 

 of the drama, " is half a man and half a horse, and was begotten by 

 the Nottingham Pitt Club, on the body of the Good Old Cause." 



W^hile the sheets of this new edition were passing through the press, 

 Lancelot Eolleston, Esq., Mr. Smith's associated candidate at the Not- 

 tingham election in 1820, was removed by the hand of death. The 

 Nottinghamshire Guardian pays this brief and merited tribute to his 

 memory: — "Colonel Eolleston was ardently devoted to fox-hunting, 

 which he continued to an advanced period of his life — as long, indeed, 

 as the country was hunted. Contemporary, though some eight years the 

 junior of Assheton Smith and Musters, he was the intimate friend of 

 both those renowned sportsmen, and was himself one of the men of 

 his day across a country. There was not a more graceful horseman, 

 or a more unjealous rider in any hunt." 



Another contemporary of Mr. Smith's, from whose sporting recol- 

 lections the author of this memoir has freely quoted — Dick Christian, 

 — has also passed away so recently as the beginning of the present 

 month, June 1862, at the advanced age of eighty-three. 



Note to Anecdote at Pages 9-10. 



There are different versions of the set-to between Mr. Smith and 

 the coal-heaver, narrated in the first chapter of this memoir. Some 

 say it occurred at Leicester, others at Stamford ; but the best informed 

 affirm that it took place opposite Middleton's bank, at Loughborough, 

 which is much nearer Quorn than Leicester. A writer in The Field, more- 

 over, has impeached the veracity of our relation of the anecdote ; his 



