NORTHUMBERLAND ELECTION BROADSIDE – LIDDELL AND LAMBTON POLITICAL EXCHANGE – “Dear Lambton, These Are Not Times To Suffer Private Feelings…” – Alnwick – 1826

Rare Northumberland political broadside printing a sharp exchange between Thomas Henry Liddell and John George Lambton, later Earl of Durham, originally dated February 1820 and evidently republished within the charged atmosphere of the Northumberland election contests of the 1820s.

Printed at Alnwick by Smith, the broadside reproduces Liddell’s letter to Lambton from Brighton, 24 February 1820, in which he declares that Lambton’s conduct in Parliament and in County Durham appeared to him “so dangerous” that, even if Lambton were his brother, he would oppose him by every means in his power. Beneath this appears Lambton’s famously terse reply: “I feel Gratitude for your FRANKNESS; Compassion for your FEARS; little Dread of your OPPOSITION; and no want of your SUPPORT.”

The piece is of particular interest because it preserves, in broadside form, a personal and political antagonism between two figures deeply embedded in North-East parliamentary politics. Lambton, later Earl of Durham, was one of the leading Whig figures of the period and subsequently became closely associated with Reform politics. Liddell, later Lord Ravensworth, was one of the principal candidates in the celebrated Northumberland county election of 1826.

Although the letters date from 1820, their republication or circulation in broadside form is highly significant in the context of the later Northumberland election struggles. The 1826 contest involved Lord Howick, Matthew Bell, Henry Thomas Liddell, and Thomas Wentworth Beaumont, and became notorious for its expense, printed propaganda, coalition rumours, personal attacks, and political hostility. The wider campaign atmosphere also culminated in the well-known duel on Bamburgh Sands between Beaumont and Lambton.

The broadside’s value lies in its use of an earlier personal exchange as political ammunition, demonstrating how previous disputes, private correspondence, and public reputation could be revived and weaponised during Georgian electioneering.

No separate institutional copy of this precise broadside has been traced in the British Library, Library Hub Discover, or WorldCat databases. The exchange itself is documented in later local historical sources, but this ephemeral broadside printing appears to be apparently unrecorded institutionally.

Single printed broadside. Sheet size approximately 27.6 x 22.3 cm.

Condition: Fold lines as issued, light creasing, minor age toning, and handling wear consistent with original political use. Contemporary manuscript docketing to verso. Overall very good.

A scarce and historically significant survival of North-East political ephemera, linking Liddell, Lambton, and the wider culture of personal attack and printed propaganda surrounding the famous Northumberland election campaigns.

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