The Sun.
London, England, 1869-02-06 00:00:00

ELECTION- PE'TITIOXS.

IMr. Baron Martin's protest at Bradford against having
to try election petitions has attracted some attention.
The Times has a leaderupon it, but does not think it will do
much to influence public opinion. But in one point, says
our contemporary, everybody will sympathise with Mr.
Baron Martin. He is in this painfully anomalous position,
that what he does is as telling an argument as any
antagonist need be at the trouble to produce against
what he says. He protests against the present system
as unsatisfactory, while he is himself acting upon it in
such a way that everybody is satisfied. Indeed,
" satisfied " is far too mild a word to use. The
way in which Mr. Baron Martin and his brother
judges have discharged their new duties has won
for them the admiration and gratitude of the country.
Mr. Baron Martin is, indeed, a touching instance of the
half-cruel, half-sportive irony of fate. If it is hard to have
to carry out in your own person a system you cordially
dislike and disapprove, what must it be to feel that under
the iron pressure of deity you are carrying it out in such a
way as to make everybody else delighted with it ?
Mr. Justice Willes had rather a curious point to decide
at Westbury. It was admitted by the respondent that
an employer of labour in the town had used his influence
unduly amongst his workmen. But it was argued that
such an act would not vitiate an election. As Serjeant
Parry put it in his address to the judge, " The act of a
single man among the people employedwithin the walls of
his own factory, and without the knowledge or sanction
of the sitting member, was not an act upon which his
lordship was necessarily bound to void the election.',
It seems, too, that several of the cases thought by the
betitioners to be cases of bribery were merely matters of
usiness, having nothing to do with the election. Then
Mr. Justice Willes has to decide also what amount of
rioting and intimidation would upset an election. One
case of bribery, it has been laid down by Mr. Baron
Martin, would void an election ; but Mr. Serjeant Parry
contended that this would not be the case with reference
to treating or undue influence. In the cases of intimidation
heretofore decided by committees, the proof had usually
been that there.had been riotous and disorderly proceedings,
or, as in some of the Irish cases, denunciations by priests
addressed to large numbers. Surely his lordship
would nut say that the act of fifteen or twenty
persons surrounding and intimidating a voter would be
enough to void an election? In answer to this query his
lordship said : "That is a question of law which would
have to be decided. I may say this, that I shall struggle
to maintain a well-conducted election, unless lam con-
vinced beyond any conceivable doubt of an act which does
not of itself affect the result of the poll, but which techni-
cally destroys the transaction." Notwithstanding the
arguments of the learned serjeant, the judge decided for
the petitioner, voiding the election. He declared that the
intimidation by Mr. llarrop on the employer was suffi-
cient to make the election of no effect. This, however,
neither affected the character of the sitting member or the
character generally of the town. No order was made as t
costs.

Some remarks of Mr. Justice Blackburn on the \Val-
lingford petition may be interesting. He agreed with
Baron Martin and Mr. Justice 'Willes that the statute
meant that treating with a corrupt intent would void the
election ; and that, as one of them had said, if a single
thimbleful of liquor was given with a corrupt intention, it
would be enough to void the election. But if only a thimble-
ful had been given, no man would find it out as a fact.
Therefore it was a question of amount and degree. If this
case stood alone, no one would think it was done with a
corrupt intention. All the things must be taken together.
Again, his lordship defined corrupt treating. Drink or
entertainment given in such a way as to influence the
election, considerable entertainments to gain popularity
or to avoid unpopularity, would come within the statute ;
but it was a question of degree. His impression was
that it was clearly settled by the previous decisions in
election petitions that an election was void where an
agent had, even contrary to the wish of his employer, been
guilty of a corrupt act, provided it was done by colour of
the agency. "Where money had been given to an agent
with an intimation that no inquiry would be made as
to its application, or where the agent was able after the
election to ask to be repaid money he had expended, there
would be sufficient to invalidate the election.

At the Derry election, bribery having been attempted
to be proved, a letter was put in from Mr. Serjeant
Dowse, M.P., who won the election in which he said to

his agent, " One thing we must all bear in mind, that no
expenditure that is legal will be wanting. Anything
beyond that I will never in any manner sanction."

The Bishop of Bath and Wells has collated the
Right Rev. J. Chapman, D.D., late Bishop of Colombo,
to the prebendal stall of Warminster in WelLs Gotha.
Iral.

Lord Byron, says the London Review, accused Braham,
the singer, of pronouncing the word " enthusiasm" as if
it were written "entoosymoosy." The London Revieu
holds that it would be a good thing if such a word were
recognised by our dictionaries, as distinguishing the coun-
terfeit from the real article. There are plenty of people
In the world the whole of whose creeds and tastes are
second-hand. Their religious opinions are determined 1:),
accidents of personal proximity ; and as for pictures and
music, they go about in the most barefaced manner, asking
those whom they consider experts what is the proper
thing to admire. And then they admire it. Nor is that
the end of the puzzle ; for, apparently unconscious of the
fact that their own entoosymoosy is only of yesterday, and
quite a borrowed article, they will look down upon
and abuse others who are not entoosymoosyastica]
in the same directions. This power of getting
up feeling is probably in some way connected with queer
ideas of moral duty; for you will often find it in
conscientious people. Yet, do they deceive themselves I
Does the honest gentleman who has got up entoosymoosy
about a poem, a picture, or a sonata really and traly fancy
that his second-hand feelings have become incorporated
into his own very being, like the victuals he ate yesterday!
If he does, it must be because entoosymoosy is a thing of
crowds. It cannot exist without society, or, if it does, it
drives its subject crazy. Take old books, take articles at
verM, take snuff-boxes, take Shakespeare and the musical
glasses—what a world of entoosymoosy there is afloat in
the world about Shakespeare ! The same about Chaucer.
The same, again, about Shelley. But if we would all of
us learn to feign nothing, to express no more than we feel,
and to proportion our beliefs to the proofs of them, we
should find—at first—that our lives were made a little more
difficult, and that some of the accustomed flutter and fuse
were missing ; but there would be the comfort of feeling
that such beliefs as we really cherished were solid, and
that when we did get excited, it was with enthusiasm, and
not with entoosymoosy.

The John Bull thinks that the game of "Beggar my
Neighbour" is sometimes played by statesmen, ani
curiously all the tricks change, and the Court cards shift
backwards and forwards. At present the game is more
interesting than usual, for it concerns Ireland and her
Church. The popular cry, now, is all for complete
equality ; that no one Church or creed should in any way
find favour more than another ; in fact, that you should
not favour what you believe to be right, any more than
that you believe to be wrong. Not only this. You are
asked to take away the lawful and time-honoured revenues
of your own Church—not in order to give them to another
claimant, but simply that your Church should be no better
off than the poorest sect in the United Kingdom. You
Are asked to take them away from the Anglican Church
in Ireland, because the mass of Irish people are Roman
Catholic and because the Church of Rome is said to have
a prior right to them. But are the people to be absolved
from paying the amount of their rates and tithes, or are
they to be given back to the Church of Rome ? By no
means. They are to be collected and disposed of by
fovernment, probably to promote " secular education."
How this is to relieve the people, or satisfy the "prior
claims" of the Church of Rome, it is not easy to see.

The Saturday Review draws attention to the difficulties
of Mr. Cardwell's position, and trusts that he is making
up his mind to do the work of reform in earnest. It does
not believe that he will find it so impossible to deal with
the Horse Guards as some imagine that he will. In the
near relations which exist between the executive head of
the army and the throne it has been supposed that any
reformer would find a grave source of embarrassment ; but
this is an entire delusion. No appeal would be needed to
the sound constitutional principles which have always
governed the conduct of her Majesty, for no one who ever
held the command in chief has acknowledged more frankly
than the Duke of Cambridge that the War Minister
ought to be supreme, and that the proper function of. the
Commander-in-Chief is to act as his principal adviser in
military matters. The Horse Guards plotters are much
more zealous for soldier-supremacy than the head of
the Horse Guards has ever shewn himself to be.
That the time has come for the reorganisation
of the War Department, with an unflinching
regard to sound principles of administration and
to nothing else, we are profundly convinced; and
if Mr. Cardwell appreciates the importance of the
crisis, it is no wonder that he should pause to mature his
plans before committing himself to definite action. If, on
the other hand, he shrinks from the plain duty before him,
and limits his aspirations to that heaven of feeble Ministers
—a plausible compromise sufficient to last his time—he
may well hesitate before choosing between conflicting
schemes which differ only in being more or less ephemeral
and inefficient. Still there are modes and degrees of
Ministertem-
porising,
i whocisive
actionis c
may,ont content
ntl nle
course,rely
transmit the difficulty to his successors no t much more
sPt°alv.iisiilng go' ff ae
nd a
day , of
formidable than he found it himself, whileby another
remediless except by a reform little short of revo
he may so aggravate the confusion as to leave iltutaiohnn.ost

The Conservative ladies of Burnley have grace-
fully recognised the services which Lieutenant-General the
lion. Sir J. Y. Scarlett had rendered at the recent elec-
tion, by contesting the borough on Conservative principles,
by presenting to Lady Scarlat a magnificent silver-gilt
vase, which had cost £3,10, and which had been entirely
snlocribed for by the ladies themselves.
STRIKE OF SEAMEN AT NEW YORK.—The seamen
of this port are on a strike for higher wages, and a pro-
cession of about 1,200 of them paraded the lower streets
yesterday. A meeting was afterwards held, and several
speeches were made. The strike is intended to operate
against shipping masters and boarding-house keepers, who
are demanding a heavier commission for shipping
New York Herald. Jan, 20.

8-J."1BIT or TEE PUBLIC JOURNALS,

The Saturday Review thinks that London ought to feel a
little more secure than it does at present. It ought not to
be possible that, in a long, populous, and frequented
street, houses should be entered by means of ladders
between six , and eight in the evening, two or
three rooms stripped of their most valuable contents,
and the thieves get away with the same case, safety,
and celerity with which they entered. It ought not
to be possible for a man to go up to a gentleman's
house and carry off a pet dog in broad midday;
and that a policeman patrolling close to the scene of
theft, when appealed to by a spectator, should calmly
plead his instructions as an excuse for not interfering. It
ought to be impossible to point out showy shops owned
by respectable ratepayers, whose principal traffic noto-
riously consists in the purchase and sale of stolen
jewellery. It ought to be impossible to point out in a
body of skilled artisans one or two men—" intelligent
operatives" and electors of the British 'Parliament, who
are known to combine the profession of crime with their
other industry. But these things, which ought to be
impossible, are far from being infrequent. They happen,
not rarely and exceptionally, but at least every week.
Most people are convinced that even without an Act of
Parliament something more might be done than is now
done for repressing the criminal expert. To effectually
deal with the ticket-of-leave man, to deter him from
going on with his profession, to keep him from
corrupting others and to keep others from associating
with him, requires a special knowledge and experience.
Such a knowledge is possessed by Colonel Henderson.
He knows the convict, from the virgin wickedness of his
Australian nonage to the full-blooded depravity of his
ticket-of-leave matarity. He knows the reclaimable and
the irreclaimable; those in whom some spark of virtue
still lingers, and those who hays lost even the grace of
hypocrisy. This knoWledge will be of use, whether the
police be armed with new powers or left only to a wider
use of their present powers. And it will be one of the
most important duties of the new chief to suggest to the
Government such changes in the law as, without
offending the prejudices of the people, may empower the
splice to act efficiently, not only for the arrest of
detected criminals, but for the prevention of meditated
crime.

The Spectator, in considering the working of the new
Bribery Act, renders ample justice to the ex-Premier
for the part he played in the transaction We
do not think that Mr. Disraeli has had sufficient credit
for the Act which transferred this duty to the reluctant
judges—an Act which will, we suspect, do more for the
English electoral system than any other reform we have
either conceived or carried out for years. We believe,
too, that Mr. Disraeli proposed what he did with a deal
understanding of its result, and a sincere desire to bring
that result about—a clear understanding which does no
less credit to his intellect than the desire to effect it does
to his political sincerity. As we have never shrunk from
expressing our generally very low opinion of Mr. Disraeli's
political morality, it is more than ever our duty to do the
fullest justice to him on an achievement like this, which
was unquestionably his achievement—unquestionably
effected with an intelligent conception of what he was
about, and which has still more unquestionably stood the
test of trial. It is worth while noting, however, how im-
measurably more important the change of method has
been, in trying the corrupt practices, than the change of
penalty for these corrupt practices. In no case, we believe,
as yet, has the law of last session been put in force for
bribery. Almost all the legal questions of the various
election trials have been legal questions under the old,
Acts, and not under the new. The great and only great.
alteration has been in the method of
.procedure, and that
has been everything. had the nolo episcopari of the
judges been listened to, and the cld procedure left un•
changed, no good would have been effected at all by the
mere increased severity of penalty."