William Burge

Burge stood unsuccessfully in the (celebrated) Oldham election of 1832. The candidates were as follows, with votes cast: John Fielden, 675; William Cobbett, 644; B. H. Bright, 153; William Burge, 101; George Stephen, 3. Field and Cobbett thus both returned.
Burge was received with considerable hostility at the hustings. In his speech he claimed:
Contrary to a placard, he received £1,500 per annum but claimed that this did not come for the ‘West Indians’ i.e. slaveowners, though he did not say where it did come from.
‘...he hated slavery himself, and if he saw a way of abolishing it with safety to the slaves, he would rejoice to support its abolition – but they were not prepared for freedom – they must first receive moral instruction – they must be taught how to use their freedom.’
He also declared himself in favour of removing corn duty if it could be safely effected, relieving tax if this could be done while ‘safely providing for the exigencies of the state', nor was he adverse to commutation of tithes.
But he was ‘a friend to the security of property – of all property – and he would manfully declare that property must not be endangered’.
Reminded his audience of the importance of the colonial market.
It’s true that he owned 136 slaves, which had come to him via his marriage, slaves ‘who had entreated him not to free them’.
Source: The Manchester Times and Gazette, Saturday, 15 December, 1832.

He was opposed, in particular, by George Stephen of the Anti-Slavery Society. Stephen later gave an account of the election (in which he did very badly) in his Recollections:
'More for a frolic than with any serious intention, I went to Oldham at the first election after the reform bill had passed, to oppose Burge. I only arrived the day before the nomination, and had no committee, and sent out no address. Mr. Burge, though a practical and able tactician, was annoyed beyond measure when I, thus unexpectedly, appeared in the field; having preceded me in his canvass, he was entitled to speak before me, and unwisely broke out into a violent pro-slavery philippic. I thanked him cordially in my heart, and when my turn came, retorted with an Antislavery sermon. Sermons are rarely suited to the hustings, but as I proceeded to dissect the condition of slavery, and proved it to be a violation of every syllable in the decalogue, I carried all along with me. Mr. Burge was hissed, and hooted, and rejected. He was, in many respects, a worthy man, and in after years I was often consulted by him on points of West Indian economy: when we thus became in some measure [p. 248] familiarly acquainted, he told me that my Oldham sermon had deprived him of more than a hundred promised votes!' [p.249]
Source: Sir George Stephen, Antislavery Recollections: in a series of letters addressed to Mrs Beecher Stowe (London, Thomas Hatchard, 1854), pp. 248-9.