The Express.
London, England, 1866-09-11 00:00:00

MISCIILLAN3OI3B TOPIOR.

Of the various suggestions which have been lately offered
respecting an appropriate punishment for bribery, the most
practical, the Daily New thinks, is the proposal to visit
any one found guilty of it, whether candidate, agent, or
voter, with entire and perpetual disfranchisement, de.

. .
priving a man not merely of the right to sit in parliament
or to vote at parliamentary elections, but to disqualify
him also for voting in municipal elections, shutting him
out from his vestry, and excluding him entirely from
public life in any of those numerous forms which exist in
Ragland.
The Herald tarns to the election commissions to find
special evidence against the liberal party, and to show
that it is to the boroughs when the electoral qualifioation
is the lowest, that we must look for corruption and bribery
triumphant.
' •

Having dwelt on the potency of female influence in in-
ducing electors to accept money for their votes, the Star
concludes by saying the only way to neutralise this in-
fluence, or to turn It from a degrading into an elevating
influence, is to destroy the prevalent conceptions of the
suffrage as a vested interest—a perquisite, a social pos-
session—to make it the simple instrument of political
duty, and to infuse into electioneering generally a higher,
• more intellectual, a more moral tone. Nor is it 'Utopian
to propose this. A good reform bill and the ballot would
all but accomplish the work, and their natural progressive
results would speedily emnplete it.
The Telegraph insists that the necessity of a new cholera
asylum has been proved. If there be institutions which
can receive the sufferers, by all means let the fact be made
known. Those who have worked hardest to stem the tide
of destitution in East London declare that such places do
not exist ; that there are no adequate means of housing
the majority of orphans whom the pestilence has rendered
homeless ; and the Telegraph prefers this practical know-
ledge to a thousand *adieu' which are the mere coinage
of the brain.
The statue in Leicester-square, which it is supposed has
survived more extensive mutilations than any other statue
ever erected, has now, it seems, just been covered from head
to foot with a glaring white paint which only seems to make
its wounded and broken members the more visible. The
Times has some amusing remarks upon the fact, and pro-
ceeds to tax the Metropolitan Board of Works, who have
taken charge of the inclosure in Leicester-square, with
neglecting the duties imposed upon them by the act

of parliament under which they obtained posses ion of
it. This miserable enclosure is, we are informed,
'` a garden or ornamental ground," under the charge

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of the Metropolitan Board, which the law has required to
pat it in order within six months any time since May 4,
186i1. Its said there is some dispute as to the title ; but,
even if the terms of the act do not expressly guard against
this difficulty, the Board might surely have found some
means to maintain the square in at least decant order
while the dispute is being settled. Its condition at pre-
sent is a scandal to their administration.