The Express.
London, England, 1853-03-23 00:00:00

L9NDON, I! ED 3LIRCII 23.

Tate traditions of London include one about a thief,
a constable, and a passer-by. The thief was in the
act of robbing a goldsmith's shop, whilst the consta-
ble was snugly watching him from a neighbourin
doorway. " Why don't you stop that rubbery?'
said the honest, simple-mantled wayfarer. " btop
till be has committed burglary,4 replied the
thief-catcher, "and then see what du."
:Visions of captures, examinations, committals,
and candeninations, in lull curt, with small
profits depending un each step, were flocking
through the mind of the eatchpole, and he let the fe-
lonious pear ripen into burglary before he p:ucked
it. Ihe simple passer-by-had only to go on his way
wondering why crime should not be stopped rather
than punished, and speculating over the cost, the
pain, the sin of letting evil grow up to its full rank-
ness rather than nip it, shot able, in the bud.
Looking out upon the broad stage of Europe we
may see just now a repetition of this drama of real
life in course of action or. a large scale. Turkey is
the poor goldsmith, Russia the freebooter. Years
ago we were told by a pamphleteer that the gold-
smith must be robbed by somebody, and though there
were legal guarantees as strong as parchments and
solemn national ratifications could make them, the
whole equity and law of the afftir was pooh-pooped ;
and the declaration repeated, that the owner
of the place could not be lett alone and
must be robbed by somebody— because he was
not able to defend himself. Lately this has been re-
echoed by the organs of despotism, who smoothed
the way of spoliation by saying robbery was inevita-
ble because disorganisation was present. The gold-
smith has not had his books properly posted up—
err, burglary is a virtue. This is literally the logic
with which the BRUNNOW journal suggests the repeti-
tion in Turkey of the infamous tragedy of Poland.
The flimsy veil being stripped from these shameful
propositions, we see the abettors of Russian despot-
ism wriggle and twist through a meagre catalogue
of other shams. Trade would be better if Russia
seised European-Turkey, was the first of these impu-
dent sophisms. The fact that our commerce with
the Ottoman Empire is rapidly growing, whilst our
trade with Austria is diminishing, at once disposes of
that allegation. The advocates of despotism failing
thus in their first plea—that of lucre—religion
is tried next, and we are told that the
Christian tribes require release from the Moslem
yoke. Austria, a Christian power, should rule over
Christians, or still more gentle Russia. A mere
reference to the expulsion of the Protestant Mission-
aries by the Emperor FRANCIS must put this second
sham out of court, even if it were not the fact that
the Christians are in full enjoyment of their own
faith, as fully as they are of their own trade—whilst
both trade and faith would be instantly lost if either of
the encroaching powers were to include them within
the fatal cordon of their despotisms. Trade and religion
both supplying reasons for preserving Turkey from
spoliation, the journal that at times pours out its
ridicule on the friends of peace falls upon a third
excuse, and cries beware of war. On this we join
issue and re-echo with heartfelt sincerity—beware
of war! And here we have one great point of our
ease. To avoid war we must not abet injustice—to
avoid strife we must not forget our solemn pledges,
and permit a bully to rob our neighbour. We must
enter our protest in the court of the high police of
Rations, and, by preventing the robbery at once,
stay all that must otherwise ensue—the pain, the cost,
the misery sure to follow the full growth and con-
summation of the contemplated crime. The friends
of honour, of justice, and of peace, are now nudging
the elbow of the constable, and bidding him "atop
thief."
We want to hear no new shriek of another Poland
crushed under the heel of military barbarism; we
wish for no new Hungary, robbed of its local govern-
ment and self organisation, to form a new province of
a huge over-grown centralised despotism in the north;
we object loudly, earnestly, against a deed that would
give the Lombards, fellow-sufferers from like °ppm-
sions—to be avenged by outbreaks and assassinations,
and followed by the whip and the gallows. We do not
wish that Italy should find a counterpart in the East,
or that Coantantinople should rival Mantua or
Naples. To the news, therefore, of Prince Mutsu-
KOFF'S demands we raise the counter-cry of " Stop
thief!" Unlike the traditional constable whose
doings we quote, we have no interest in the sue-
Gees of the plunder. We want no employment as
witnesses after the act or as guards to keep
off the crowd who may stare stupidly at the
punishment to follow. Our interests in Englanders
in prevention ; in preserving the status quo : in re-
straining an aggressive and semi-barbarous power,
with everything to gain and little to lose by war,
from pushing into near neighbourhood with our
Indian territories, and into immediate rivalry with
oar Mediterranean fleet. As we have before said, it
is quite enough to run the costly race of rivalry in
armaments with France, without seeking another
and still more despotic competitor. In the inte-
rests, then, of national policy. no less than
in those of peace, justice, and honour, have
we raised our voice against the tortuous, insidious,
and mischievous suggestions of those who would
appeal by turns to our cupidity, our religious preju-
dices, or our love for peace, whilst they are all the
time plotting against the principles of justice and'
honesty, and inciting us to a breach of treaties and
• loss of honour that must be followed by years of
national remorse.

IN the days of Queen ANNE, and when Gamma L
was King,—and when as yet the new police were
not—there arose a man named JONATHAN WILD,
a mighty man, and a ruler among the clans of
footpads, and burglars, and highwaymen, and re-
ceivers of stolen goods. And sometimes he trafficked
with these evil-doers, and told them where they
could find a spoil,—and instructed them how to seize
it,—or bargained with them for their stolen goods ;
and sometimes he volunteered to serve the magie-
bates, and captured the evil-doers, and delivered
them into the hands of justice for a fixed price.
JONATUAN WILD was a type : he was in his
time in the realms of thiefdom what the
sisetioneming agents are in ours in the
realms of Parliamentary corrraption. We have
no organised system, no defined and efficient
law, no parliamentary police for the detection,
and oaavietiais, and punishment of traffickers in elec-
toral :cerruptice. And the electioneering agents—
the JONATHAN WILD. of Parliamentary corruption—
avail themselves of this state of affairs to make their
rain out of both parties, sometime* hiring the male-
factors, or taking tythe of their spoil for conniving at
their offences; sometimes, as petitioning agents,
lending their aid to detect and expose them.
The electioneering agent is equally ready,
as suits the game of his employer., to buy
a borough for them, or to expose the purchaser
who has bought it, and the electors who have
sold themselves. It is all in the way of business; so
that JONATHAN makes his money, he cares not whe-
ther it be by buying or selling with corrupt electors
and their bribers, or by selling them.
Tho unsophisticated moral sense of the public
decided long ago that JONATHAN WILD was
greater rascal than the worst of the rriffians and
sneaks whom he first trained to rapine and outrage,
and then sold to the gallows. And there can be
little doubt that the same unsophisticated moral
sense of the public will pass a similar judgment—has
already passed a similar judgment—upon the smooth-
faced, plausible JoNsritsy Wang of Parliamentary
corruption, of whom the first of that name was a very
inadequate type or symbol.
JONATHAN WILD suffered the fate of many other
evil-doers. Like the pitcher, he went so often to the
well that he came home broken at lust. His last
victim, Blurskits, made a desperate attempt, after he
WAS convicted, to cut, in open court, the throat of the
knave who had first employed and then betrayed him.
Colonel DICKSON is the BLVF.SKIN of the electioneer-

ing Joxsritax WILD (taking the character as an
abstraction and typical of a class); by his desperate
attempt to obtain redress or vengeance of the
agent who first took his money, and then
l sacrificed him to the arrangements of his
party. the Colonel has cut the throat of Parliamen-
tary agenting. lILUESK N'S exploit caused so much ex-
citement that from that moment the trade of JONATHAN
WILD was at an end. Honest men would no longer
employ the tutor and employer of thieves, and
thieves would no longer trust or deal with one who
sold their blood. But though the trade was spoiled
for the great scale in which JONATHAN carried it
on, it was long prosecuted in a small way by retail
dealers. Many years after JONATHAN'S death, a
band of these minor traders in guilt were convicted
and punished; and on their trial one of the witnesses
against them, when asked his trade, replied, " I
work occasionally at my trade of shoemaking, and
sometimes catch a thief." Something of the same
kind we must expect to witness—if the Legislature
do not interfere—in the event of the Derby and Nor-
wich revelations suppressing the great JONATHAN
WILDS of Parliamentary corruption. We shall have
a set of small traders in elections rising up, who may
describe themselves as—" Solicitors iu practice—who
sometimes buy and sometimes betray a borough."
It is a most anomalous feature in our electioneer-
ing law, the impunity which has hitherto attended
the " agent" in affairs of electoral corrup-
tion. 'Die bribing aspirant to a scat in Par-
liament has sometimes been punished, and
the elector selling his vote—nay, whole constituen-
cies guilty of that offence, have sometimes been
punished; but the agent has always been allowed to
escape scot free. Now, in no other class of offences
against law do we find the same immunity extended
to the hired agent of illegality. The bravo who
stabs for hire is regarded as more culpable, more de-
prased, than the murderer who stabs at the impulse
of veugvance. How comes it that the eon uptor of
electors for hire, the professional trader in corrup-
tion, is regarded as less culpable than he who com-
mits the offence prompted by excessive or misdirected
personal vanity or ambition?
Apparently the anomaly is attributable to mis-
taken notions of what is called professional duty.
The lawyer is not expected, not allowed, to betray
his client—to reveal what has been imparted to him
in professional consultations. But morality and the
security of society require that this privilege of se-
crecy extended to the profession shall have its limits.
The solicitor may conceal the perpetrated offences of
the client who consults him as to tho beet mode
of escaping punishment ; but the solicitor may not
with impunity conceal the intimations of his client
that he is going to commit an offence; much less
may he with impunity instruct his client how to
commit the offence ; and least of all may he with
impunity commit it for him. The corrupt elec-
tioneering agent is guilty of all three violations
of the law. He defeats the ends of justice by conceal-
ing his knowledge that a crime is about to be com-
mitted; he becomes an accessory before the fact by
teaching how the crime may be most safely com-
mitted ; and he becomes a principal by active
participation io it for a reward whereby he becomes
a sharer in the gains.
The truth is, that the electioneering agent is
the most culpable, the basest, and the most dangerous
of all the parties to electioneering corruption.
He sins against the clearest knowledge ; there is aoad-
mixture of any one redeeming motive in his sordid
impulses; he perpetrates the offence with a skill and
dexterity in avoiding the windy side of the law, that
renders it comparatively safe, and encourages by im-
punity. To render the agent equally amenable to
the law with the principal will not destroy electoral
corruption ; no one measure can do that • but it will
render the perpetration of the offence less easy, less
safe, and thus diminish its frequency. And it will
tend to extirpate a most discreditable and corrupting
class from what is commonly understood to be respect-
able society. The moment is propitious for an attack
upon the Parliament ary JONATHAN WILDS. Like all un-
scrupulous and adroit men who have made them-
selves of consequence by pandering to the vices of
the rich, the powerful, or the ambitious, the election-
eering agents have become overweening and insolent.
Colonel DICKSON is not the only Parliamentary
BLuESKIN who is ready to wreak his vengeance on his
JONATHAN WILD, even at the risk of exposing him-
self. And many an undetected Bweseist, on the
benches of the House of Commons, will be glad to
vent his spite against a domineering agent, or to
facilitate his emancipation from agentdom, by voting
for a Bill that would render the class amenable to
law.