The Sun.
London, England, 1852-10-25 00:00:00

ELECTION PETITIONS.

(From the Daily News )
Just after the Elections there was very great talk of
e _
petitions, but as the time draws on for their presenta- ! •.;ey..!.-.10,:)e-7Th,.),:--,J
tion, those best informed npon the subject begin to let :....\4;,?1,--ii.j.ii„-:-...,"•
out that after all there will be but a few. It is to be the A's criid gukta m
' old story over again, " Great cry and little wool." Par-
liamentary agents here found out that the corruption
was, after all, below an average. Souse even go so far as
to assert that so pure a general election never came
under their notice. It would serve a good purpose, if
those gentlemen were every one of them summoned
before a specially appointed committee of the House, and
required to produce the statements and notes of evi-
dence as to every case that had been laid before them,
and to declare the several considerations upon which they
had decided on not prccecdicg with each particular
petition. Some, no doubt, would be found to have been
abandoned as a matter of compromise, some because ex-
posure in this particular inetance would really for the
future place the represeetatives in the hands of the
honest, cud deprive tee agent of hie long-held power to
put up some ono to be plucked at every election; others,
beeaue it had suddenly become more advantageous to
stop the petition than to go on with it ; and a goodly
number would be found to lieve been abandoned because
there was no petitioner in the field able to afford such
expense as would content a parliamentary agent. It is
utter'y in vain to se; that on investigation the c3r-
raption turns out to hut” been small. We may safely
appeal from any such assertion to all who took an
active pert in the contester It was not the mere excite-
ment of ale moment that spread the report of unex-
ampled corruption. It was the rare exception that
wherever there was a contest unfair means were used,
and in those places there are plenty of people to be found
who make no secret as to how the election was lost
or won. There were rumours om the polling days in
several places which have not since died away, but have
become corroborated and confirmed; and we are not with-
out instances in proof, that if the whole number of pe-
titions be few, the smallness of the nyember is not the
result of the rareness of corruption, or sef any insuper-
able difficulty as to getting at the facts, but is in many,
if not in most instances, owing to the enormous cost of
petitions. As elections are at present condueted, a can-
didate—even where, in a moderately large coostituency,
he fights a fair battle—mutt make up his mired to pay
heavily his way to Parliament. It is a road to he passed
in any case only by a considerable scattering of gold and
silver. A man may have ambition or love of some cause
enough at heart to spend the money in an open contest;
but when he is beaten by bought votes, it is another
matter to spend as much more as the election cost him
in a patriotic effort to unseat the buyer of the seat. The
bribery-beaten candidate may reasonably enough consi-
der that it is the duty of the Parliament to weed itself
of its corrupt members, and that the nation or the con-
stituency, and not the individual, should pay the coat.
It is in vain to cry out against corruption, so long as its
punishmeut is guarded against by an enormous fine• upon
the prosecutor. No petitioner need look to spend less
than five hundred pounds, and he may be plucked to the
extent of one or two thousand, and then have the satis-
faction of knowing that the corrupt electors aro still .in
full force, and that he has no better, if not a worse,.
chance, of being returned than before.
As elections now stand—even in the most flagrant in-
stances—members are left in the full enjoyment of their
purchased honours, and constituencies in undisturbed
possession of a national trust, which they systematically
betray. Those acquainted, for instance, with the myste-
ries of the management of the franchise at Maidstone,
know that when an election is on foot a certain club of
voters meet in a private parlour in a public house to
talk over the merits of the candidates—and pipes aro
smoked, and the weather gone over, and crops discussed,
and beer and gin and water tippled—and by and bye,
through, it may be, some mysterioua 'hole in the wall,
there appears a 5 in chalk on a little black board over
the fire-place; the eyes of the company find their way
in that direction one after another, heads arc shaken in
dissent, and on goes the drinking, and the smoke
thickens, and the conversation becomes political, and in-
stead of the 5 appears a 7. No one notes the change;
the chances of the candidates are gone into with some
zeal; the nominee at the club is no favourite yet; if he
be an old member there are no end of complaints against
him; he has been a member so many years, and still
there's a malt tax, and the hop duty is neither abolished
nor changed to an acreage. If a new candidate, he is
unknown, and they must be cautious how they take new
mon. AlO comes out upon the board; faces brighten;
there's a long pull at the pipes; every glass is filled as
if by some common impulse, and the chairman gives the
health of the candidate, and then, old or new, there are
speeches and cheers, his committee named, and his
election is safe.

The mysterious ten has done it all. It is notorious
that at the last election positive evidence of bribery in
the shape of cheques fell into the hands of the opposing
party, and led to a compromise, by which one of the
Derbyite candidates was withdrawn, and a section of the
Liberals and the Tories agreed to a walk over. At the
last moment, however, an independent portion of the
constituency resolved to resist the compromise—brought
iorward a man of their own, Mr. Lee, and polled for
him, but without success. At the close of the election a
petition was very urgently spoken of, but after a time
the zeal cooled down. The question began to be asked,
what good could come of it ? Mr. Lee might unseat his
opponent, but his sur porters would, by no fair means,
win in the face of the figures over the mantel-piece, and
the instructions to shopkeepers and others from the
county round. The honest few could not afford amongst
themselves to face a petition.
The cost of the petition protects alike the bribers and
the bribed. Those who have the money have nothing
to gain by its ex?enditure, and those who have not,
though they feel the disgrace of such a representation,
have no remedy. Tradesmen in the metropolis combine
to prosecute swindlers, who would escape in numbers, if
the charges were to be borne in each instance by an
individual. Surely the public are deeply enough inter-
ested in having an honourably chosen Parliament to
raise a fund for the unseating of those who by corrupt
influences deprive the honest electors of their voice in
the state. Maidstone is far from being a single instanco.
Colchester, at the last election, went, there is little doubt,
knee-deep into its old practices. There is no lack of
proof of bribery, and open-housekeeping. Mr. Hard-
castle was defeated by these practices, and would, in all
probability, have petitioned, but the vacancy at Bury St.
Edmunds gives him a chance of getting a seat at less coat
than by petition at Colchester, and so no one means to pay
for exposing the doings of the Chief of the Woods and
Forests and his colleague, and their allies of the Eastern
Counties Railway.

At Bury St, Edmunds a petition was determined upon,
and Stuart must have lost his seat. Tho appointment to
the vice-chancellorship, however, leaves the seat open,
and no one with sufficient funds has any longer an
interest in the exposure of the member. But surely, if
a general fund had been subscribed for the purpose, the
Vice-Chancellor would have found a petition between
him and the Chiltern Hundreds ; and the public would
have bad an opportunity of ascertaining how far his
appointment might be considered in the light of a pre-
ventive to detection.
At Rochester enough is knowhne
of
fo
poll monies
, paid,
n
loose votes picked up early on t y
emplbaneress : and
t
grumbling over unfulfilled
heth thperopmrei
payments to unseat 'scent m
it is so well known that the same corrupt means would
be used again, and would return any other men
of the same politics, whilst the present Ministry continue
in office, that probably the late members would consider
it a mere idle waste of money to petition. But other
constituencies, earnest and honest, and whose votes aro
neutralized by those bought and coerced seats for Ro-
chester should surely be ready to contribute to throwing
the borough open to another contest, and so again and
again, until it become an ascertained fact that it is mere
money thrown away to attempt to bribe in Rochester.
Then there is Ipswich, from which Mr. Adair's vote,
for the ballot and reform, is to be neutralised by PM"-
Cobbold's thick and thin support of Lord Derby., be-
cause Mr. Hobhouse does not see his way through I"
expenses, first of a petition, and thenh r con-
of snot
ti tends
fair moans
less belong-
tested election. And yet no one in
that Cobbold gained his seat by IPswictinPless the
power of some thirty public•housom, more
I to pay the
means. It would bo absurd for an i
lug to his brewery, and the forces.ilial bank be fair
of Ihe seat for Ips-
wich costs of the seat, or c
d on whom falls all the
chances
enreaked for that the few
wich ; and it is scarcely to
most active of the Liberals, an
labour of the
elections,
he country generally has no less
"ons, should tax themselves to ea
heavy an amount.
shop and seat is a 'rote gained by foul
an interest in the matter than Ipswich itself. The beer
bank-bought
people, and it is
theb
e for great
nimshamssenotfofthtehe wrong
A t and their duty, for the purging of Parlia-
ment, to en done the
at part of the constituency of Ipswich.
hones
y mouth is a case of another kind, looking at the
neaps
ngabinssccri
return—and with such knowledge as any one who has
investigated the matter, may have of the practices plied
on the late occasion—there is no doubt that Mr.
eit'Cullagh might gain the seat by a scrutiny of the votes;
but a scrutiny is of all modes of procedure against a sit-
ting member the most expensive. Counsel exert their
ingenuity in contriving delays; they will spend a day,
or perhaps more, over the cross-examination of a single
witness; they will make long speeches upon a class of
points seemingly raised for the purpose, and ending in
nothing; and all these days the petitioner is at the cost
of keeping witnesses in town, and sending for fresh testi-
mony.
The present system of elections is altogether vicious.
The candidate, even where the election le to be pure,
comes forward to pay expenses himself, or else, as
some few instances, his party subscribes, and pay., , and
.
so on the face of it he occupies the position of one
seek-
ing a direct advantage for himself, and not the advantage.
of the electors and the country. if
expense be essentiat
to the choice of a representative,
borne not by the candidate, but by the constituency.
is one of the public constitutional acts of
county to chose members of Parliamen ,
are to be erected, committee-rooms
the ,
itassuredly should be
e lt
the borough or
t and if booths
engaged poll clerks,
charges should be met
messengers, Sec., employed,
by the borough or county, and not by the returned mem-
bers and beaten candidates, and so also in the case of
petitions against the return. If there be bribable elee-
tors in a constituency, it is the interest of the constitu-
ency to be rid of them, just as it is reek interest to be
rid of pickpockets or burglars;
and the member or can-
didate should no more be called upon to pay for the ex..
posure and prosecution of bribers and receivers of bribe!!
than a person who has had hie pocket picked to be called
upon to pay the cost of transporting the pickpocket. If
, „e
bribery is to be put an end to, there must be an end of
levying the cost upon the petitioner.