The Sun.
London, England, 1841-06-21 00:00:00

I
, ADDRESS TO THE VENAL AND D
CORRUPT ELECTORS IN THE UNITE
Di KINGDOM.

The country at this moment teems with addresses to
incorrupt and independent' voters; but there does not
exist, and never has appeared such a thing as
,an ddress
al
u
one addresses
bed
neltrehnepospi
ivaegrs
part of
..)ofmu
t.ahkei
In the
sia t
ryy,
cooost
at notoriouslypreylo llui.tyilet dv o
deo:,
boaulilndnc inconsiderable
body. Every one is thinking you,
their
hey faonaydde addresses
you,t
teraaln iet,hat.s,eof.
addressesthe which men
pu'oli h.
Yours are vet.; delicate and private affairs.
For the first time it seems to us that you ought to be
addressed. Do not ke alarmed. Do not for a moment
suppose that we are about to waste words on you
in reprobation of bribery, and the baseness of selling
your country. Your reply would be the same as that of
the Irish jobber who was reproached with the infamy of
selling his country :—" Thank heaven," said he, " I
have a country to sell."
So you thank heaven you have a country to sell, and
we are not so idle as to suppose that any arguments of
ours could make you ashamed of such infamy We are
not about to commit the folly of attempting to wash the
blackamoor white. We know that there is no soaping
such ns you. Our purpose is to address you with refer-
ence only to your own interests, and to show you what
should be the state of the bribery market in the present
great crisis.
Our apprehension is, that the monopolists will over-
reach you and that you will sell yourselves too cheap
from ignorance of what you are about in this momentous
conjuncture.
First you have to observe that none of the Precedents
of bribery are applicable to present circumstances. Yen
had ten pounds at the last election for voting for a can-
didate who would govern a third of the kingdom on
the principle of coercion instead of conciliation. You
cared not a rush for Ireland; you cared, as you delight
to express it, for nobody but " number one." Well,
but a new question has arisen, which extremely concerns
this same " number one." What are the terms on which
the same 101. is now offered ? For ten pounds you are
to reject a measure of relief, the value of which 10 you
may not be less than two, three, four, er five hundred
pounds, more or less, according to the scale of yisur
circumstances and transactions.
Take pen, ink, and paper, and make a sober calcula-
tion of the amount of your portion of the bread-tax, the
sugar duty, and the timber duty, and cast up what the
saving would be to you from the proposed measures of
Government, You have then to reckon the probable
term of your life, and to multiply the yearly saving by
the number of years which you may live. This cum
you have to compare with the bribe offl3red you for the
sacrifice of it. Let us suppose that you have a hundred
a year, and a small family to support. We cannot esti-
mate your benefit from the reduction of the bread-tax,
sugar duties, and timber duties, at less than eight
pounds ; and let us reckon your life at twenty years
purchase : this would give 1601, for refusing which
saving a modest gentleman has the assurance -to offer
you ten pounds, forsooth ! lie gives you 10/ to rob
you of 1601.
Why, you should offer him ten pounds, ay, and ten
times ten pounds, to obtain for you the proposed relief.
It would be well worth your while to compound for
.the
Iremission of the taxes in a bribe to your briber. It is
clearly downright idiocy in you to fix yourself with a
charge of hundreds for a paltry bribe of tens.
We are prepared to prove that bribery ought to change
sides, and that it is more your interest to bribe your
candidates to support the measures of relief, than to take
a miserable pittance to defeat the much larger benefit
proposed for you by the Government.
The calculation we have sketched out for you is far
from complete. It doe's not include the advantages in
which you may be concerned from the extension of com-
merce, nor the interests which your children have in
the proposed relief. Your voice may now not only fix
burdens on yourself, but on your posterity. Money saved
is money got, and for a miserable trifle will yon sell
away the handsome amount of money to be saved and
got by yourself and your children after you, by the re-
duction of heavy and injurious taxes ?
• It would be vain to implore you not to he rogues. 11-. A
don't be at once rogues and fools. Have a care that the
biter is not bit. The monopolist who buys your vote,
buys at the same time the power of repaying himself
tenfold, or more, out of your pocket. You begin repay-
ing him with the very next morsel you put into your
mouth. As in the sucking pumps, you must throw down
a cup of water to make the instrument work so as to
bring up tuns, so the monopolist ,throws a few pounds
into your pocket to pump it up again at cent. per cent.
interest. The mouth with which you give your vote
for him pays tolls to him in every morsel that it takes
in. You are thus overreached, and heavily the loser by
ribery. If the monopolist gave you a hundred pounds
fee your vote, he would not give you the equivalent for
what he deprives you of. Now we know how useless it
would
.be to expatiate to you on the cruel injury you do
to society' py selling your vote to those who support
systems
at restriction at the expense of its vital
interests; if you profited by the bargain you would trouble
yourselves little about the damage to the rest of the com-
munity, but yet you are not in love with mischief,
it is pelf that you are in love with, and we are sire that
we only do you justice in supposing that you would not
do an injury to your country without some benefit to
yourselves—much more, that you would do an injury to
your country in which, you yourselves would be sharers.
Now this is what you have to consider. One of our
great satirists makes his prince of rogues once resolve
on an honest line of conduct, because, after the moat
anxious consideration, lie could not see how anything
was to be got by a knavish course. This is precisely
what we would make you understand.. We do not call
tuipoir
t
use
to the choice of any particular colour because of its
0f3.-44 uh
one bs
teyh—o Anvecs: mightr oil
c ea
s bsle,ceal invite ethetlBleatibted-
beauty—but we argue that you should be honest in this
crisis because you have nothing to gain comparable with
with what yOu must lose by any other course of conduct_
Your option is this : Government efibre you n greatt be-
nefit—the monopolist offers you a paltaT sum that you
may forego the greater gain. What mu with a particle
of sense, not to mention honesty to you, will hesitate
as to the choice ?
If you look at the thing in the gross, you will see at
once what a bubble bargain the corrupter would drive
with you.
A great authority in financial statistics, the writer-of
a tract called " The Many sacrificed to the Few ne the
Food Monopoly," calculates the enhancement of prices
by the system improperly called protective, thus :
Gram of all kinds £21,860,928
Meat
Butter and cheese- 4,246,666
Timber 7,600,000
Tallow

£44,790,927
which it equal to seven-eighths of the amount raised by
taxation for purposes of revenue in the year 1840.
The same authority, in another publication on the in-
terests favoured at the public expense, estimates the ef-
fect, direct and indirect, of all to amount to ai burdc' of
a hundred millions annually.
Now we ask you to consider what is your limn in this
enormous burden and what compensation fur it •can be
any bribe that die monopolists can offer you. Why.
they would bribe you by tens and burden you by
hundreds. Their bribe is occasional, annual their burden
to be continued through the bribe. Can you be 8*
penny knavish and pound foolish as to accede to such
terms ?

You hear much, no doubt, of the sums subscri bed alt
the Carlton Club for your corruption ; but, if: they
amount to a million, they are but the hundreth rtirt of
the burden which the monopolists annually • impose
on the country, according to the quoted ealceletion of
one of our ybest practical economists. No', if Tml•
the venal and corrupt, bear but; a hundredth
you . the equivalent of one years'
part of the burden, a bribe of a million only gives
are bribed with the compensation for one yesre
charge,r years to
c:iarge, and you
and. you are charged 3' .
1,611
come, anti your children after you. Will. any tar.
oot of Bedlam consent to so ruinously- losingvery
diafferent
gab,' ? Bribery heretofore has been a
thing from what bribery is now ; has!' .
to talk to you
been, ark,d alwap must be, but it is vain •
osterons folly,
~-talive vs hn6
of that ; hu.: it is also, in this crisis,,
prepoaurseb es- something
for you are to he bribed to deny
ni to N i than tl ie bribe. But
incomparably more i;
3:may say, " The monopolist may Kl,T___oee.A.,, • e
musetY.
hoeurvacluupeidoiftyo .uirnianyterriets.'sletwill.nile- iitt-ih:e-
inl fad your cor-
triel:ttlPr°lllPs:hisiiiii:nia-nditandhll7.7.--ur
,would amount to
then, give you bribes of hundreds,
numbers,thousands,
nt odo
A rise in Tour
rupters not prepared to expeadan w
the. inttirests which
bad market corresponding, atone
ofmild;
would
raise
tomai
you have at stake ii!
beyondth the mean s of your buyers.
sums constituencies,vb iic ijnotto
the prices of corruption
x,r
t your . hirrupters.
You would on such terms c i
r'esent fain cy f briber•
~ ay in
We have exemplified the
pit '
the gross. We will liolv illustrate
very small instance.
You have rofession of oon
heard a vvt p . cern for the
and agricultut tal labourers, interests of the farmers
f both which classes some of you whom we now
some o
ss doubtless are. Many of the
el
farmer and
labourers occupying cottages, with a lit-dde garden, small
orchard, or the like, used to make their few pounds a
year by the sale of fruit for preserving. The high
year
of sugart,, for the last two or three, years destroyed
p.
the market fur their produce,
h. h
w le wa 3 - left to rot, or
thrown to the pigs. the monopolist ()tiers these poor
people a bribe of five or ten pounds to elect him, and to
empower Min to put a negative on the reduction of the
foreign sugar duties. Why, his bribe will not compen-
sate for the lost fruit of any one past year, to say no-
' thing of the future, or of the enhanced price of food to
the little farmer or labourer ; and, poor as the man may
be, it would be better worth his while to sell his bed to
give a bribe to the candidate to vote against the mono-
polies, than to receive one to enable the candidate to
continue his burdens. The instance we have given shows
but a partial effect of one monopoly, and that not the
greatest ; but when such are partial effects, what must
be the full consequences of the monopolies ?
And you have all your own experiences, if you will
but consult them. You are all to be found in the same
category, or other of the monopolists' oppressions. Yon
know what the misery of rising bread and falling wages
is; or you know 'how your household economy has suf-
fered from clear sugar; or you know the bad thrift of
using bad timber at a high price; or you know the evils
of declining foreign markets through the refusal to take
foreign corn in exchange, and the consequent forced
growth of foreign manufactures.. And, knowing. these
things, you know how to strike the balance between the
large reliefs cffered to you by the Government., and the
wretched bribe of the monopolists for the continuance of
your injurious burdens and impolitic restrictions. ;the
man who takes a bribe on such terms is not only a caw
, firmed knave„ but a consummate fool.--Examiner. -•-•

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