imes, and abounding in original
features of character, I collected among some of its elder inhabitants
a variety of amusing facts and documents, relative to the eccentric
candidates and their elections.

Southward of Wandsworth, a road extends nearly two miles to the
village of Lower Tooting, and nearly midway are a few houses, or
hamlet, by the side of a small common, called _Garrat_, from which the
road itself is called _Garrat Lane_. Various encroachments on this
common led to an association of the neighbours about three-score years
since, when they chose a president, or _mayor_, to protect their
rights; and the time of their first election, being the period of a
new parliament, it was agreed that the mayor should be re-chosen after
every general election. Some facetious members of the club gave, in a
few years, local notoriety to this election; and, when party spirit
ran high in the days of _Wilkes and Liberty_, it was easy to create an
appetite for a burlesque election among the lower orders of the
metropolis. The publicans at Wandsworth, Tooting, Battersea, Clapham,
and Vauxhall, made a purse to give it character; and Mr. Foote
rendered its interest universal, by calling one of his inimitable
farces, "_the Mayor of Garrat_." I have indeed been told, that Foote,
Garrick, and Wilkes, wrote some of the candidates' addresses, for the
purpose of instructing the people in the corruptions which attend
elections to the legislature, and of producing those reforms by means
of ridicule and shame, which are vainly expected from solemn appeals
of argument and patriotism.

Not being able to find the members for Garrat in Beatson's Political
Index, or in any of the Court Calendars, I am obliged to depend on
tradition for information in regard to the early history of this
famous borough. The first mayor of whom I could hear was called Sir
John Harper. He filled the seat during two parliaments, and was, it
appears, a man of wit, for, on a dead cat being thrown at him on the
hustings, and a bye-stander exclaiming that it stunk worse than a fox,
Sir John vociferated, "that's no wonder, for you see it's a
_poll_-cat." This noted baronet was, in the metropolis, a retailer of
brick-dust; and, his Garrat honours being supposed to be a means of
improving his trade and the condition of his ass, many characters in
similar occupations were led to aspire to the same distinctions.

He was succeeded by Sir Jeffrey Dunstan, who was returned