The Express.
London, England, 1866-08-28 00:00:00

MAPPIN BROl'HEßS.—Established A.D. 1810.

CHESTS of BILWIRPLATIC for thoOOLOIirIIBS,

CUTLERY and SILVER PLATE Al
=mamma

M4P,Prit 44-01 M's. LoNDoir-BRrocor,

222, REGENT-
:;, mar.

! ft

1. 4 eat a • ON, Tailors and Outfitters,
tr a I oat lb Illytntemolomet, Ledooloroquare, W., lumep Si
Ash Awl el sorts CLOTHING Toed! loads
lore Kassieseboobee Site The. to SAL
Hips mod Nees Sas& sis. to Or.
elasuaor °memo lea to ma.
Saleable tor A Wow

/1:0 AND SEE THE SHOW
MX et It e. to TILOVISKIIS In the shop window, and select
theme," M J. end 0. SAMPSON'S Tailors end Outfitters,
1 sod; Mom stnek Lekester-equare, W.

AFTER WHAT I—After Mellon's Promenade
0011011111 S, SVANN to sap. We Mali meet there.

(he erprello.

TO 0011.1.ESTOND11241e.
Overtime: Me attended for "The Dupree iletelar
:I=maul be at the Otlice, Sok by Two
en the day of publication.

MEMOS.
TEN Itelink TEX HUGUENOT CAPTAIN. Mourn Vining,
and G. Honey ; Mbar Neilson, naval& Thomeao, and lima
atirllng.—And QUIET LODGINGS.

BRITANNIA.
TIM IVIMMIG, TR/ MUTINY AT TUN NORK—Mr.
Imo, Mks Rom Ned& Miss Lalimmar; Mr. U. MaxlMAi: Mr. C.
Woodman • Mader It. ihmisra—And JACK =NM rss
LONDON km= SOY.

HIGH WAXJR AT LONDON 1111.1DGIL
TON DAT —Morithet. A. Lts -Afternoon, Th. NY&
TO4LOnneir—No Mt Afternoon. th. lest.

LONDON, TUESDAY, AUGUST 28.

By= at the risk of wearying our readers, we
must ask them once more to contemplate our sys-

tem of parliamentary election', as it is seen in
operation at Great Yarmouth. We have now
before ua the evidence of all the candidates in the

recent contest. Upon Sir E. Lscow's part in the
transaction we have already commented ; and Mr.
Goorsom's examination is little more than a repo-

_
tition of his colleague's. There is the same prudent
ignorance—extending in Mr. GOODSON'S we to
the whole previous history of the con-
stituency ; an ignorance, however, which there is
not the least reason to suppose feigned,
since where the common aim of all the parties con-
cerned is to prevent a candidate from having any
legal knowledge of what is going on, he must take
some active measures if he wishes to find out the
truth. One candidate, and we regret to say one

only, did pursue this course. Mr. Miusamsig
tells us that, though assured by the agent that
" there was every probability of a Liberal candidate
" winning," it turned out upon an actual canvass
that a large number of the voters who had been
set down as liberals " would not make up their
" minds." According to the received doctrine in

Yarmouth upon such matters, Mr. MAISHMIN
ought to have had no suspicion whatever as to
the real significanee of this phrase. He should
have supposed the voters to be still doubtful upon
some point in their pol;tical creed, and have trusted
to his own speeches at public meetings, backed by
the more familiar arguments of his local friends, to
work the necessary conversion before the day of poll-

ing. Instead of this, Mr. MARSH/LAN displayed a
total disregard of the conventional proprieties
proper to the occasion. He was uncharitable
enough to suspect., or rather to feel convinced,
that this mental hesitation would only be removed

by the application of stimulants to the pockets of
those who suffered from it ; and this conviction
_ _

was strengthened, he tells us, by " a remark of
" one of the voters—whether Tory or Whig I
" don't know—who said, ' I am ready to lay

" down my life for JEsus CHRIST, but I don't
" consider that it would be a sin to take
" money for my vote.' " Of course Mr.
MAKEIHMAN ought to have seen in this
nothing more than a statement of the
superiority of faith over works, slightly
irrelevant perhaps to a borough election, but still
interesting as a symptom of the spiritual condition
of the speaker. With a coarse common sense,
however, which clearly proved him to be out of
place in canvassing Great Yarmouth, he at once
set down the theologian as " venal," and declined
to contest a seat thatcould onlybe won by bribery.
We can quite believe that Mr. BROCIDEN now
wishes that he had followed Mr. MAnsitarAx's
example. But bribery is not a new or ill
understood offence into which a man may be
led almost without knowing it ; and, consequently,
we cannot admit that a candidate who has been

proved guilty of it on his own confession has a
claim on our forbearance simply because he has
made a clean breast of it. Mr. BROODEN was
anxious, he says, not to " commit himself to •
" course so repugnant to his feelings"—we pre-
sume that no amount of pride of purse would lead
a man to prefer being returned by bribery—but
his repugnance was not so great as to prevent him
from going to the poll after he had learned that
his only chance of success there lay in overbribing
—" overtaking" seems to have been the word used
—the Conservatives. To secure this result he pro-
vided 6,0001., all of which was spent except
about 300/. We confess, however, that the almost
cynical frankness displayed in Mr. BROCIDEN9B
evidence is of the two more to our taste t'uut the
infantine simplicity of Sir E. Lacom, and we are
willing to make some small allowance for a candi-
date who found that his opponents were spend-
ing hard cash in addition to making full use of the
"legitimate influence" exercised bythe "proprietor
"of many public houses." But it is an ugly sign
of the state of public feeling on the subject when
the only difference between legal and illegal ex-
penses seems to be that the candidate makes up
his mind to the one before the election begins, and
to the other while it is going on.
The Reigate Commission continues to fur-
nish the principal comic business of the in-
quiries now proceeding, and to judge from the
amount of " laughter" with which the evidence
is received, the inhabitants of that not very lively
borough are enjoying an amount of fun which
may perhaps make up for the balance
still owing to many of them in respect of their
votes last year. The election appears to have been
conducted—on the part of Mr. GOIFER'S friends, at
all events—on the principle of mutual assurance.
Almost every voter applied to was at once " em-
" ployed "in some capacity or other. " I can
" find you work as a canvasser," was universally
understood as the equivalent of " I will per
" you fairly for your vote." We observe that the
corruption of the Reigate voters has been adduced
as especially confirmatory of Mr. Lows's prophe-
cies of the mischiefs that must inevitably result from
an extension of the franchise. To onr minds, the
lesson to be drawn from it is not of this descrip-
tion. A gardener paying 161. a-year rent, a
carpenter who keeps a small shop and pays 191. a
year, a tallow chandler living in a 101. house,
seem to be quite typical members of those middle