The Sun.
London, England, 1867-04-30 00:00:00

VENAL VOTING.

The Neu, York Tribune has published a series of
letters which have excited very general attention,
and deserve even more•—from the national impor-
tance, of suppressing the system exposed. These
letters relate to the moral condition of the New
York Legislature, and shocking as are the revela-
tions made by this writer of the bribery and cor-
ruption in vogue, those best informed are compelled
to admit that the picture is rather under than over-
drawn. Venality is being developed and worked
on a scale it is high time to suppress, before
it takes a flight which will bring into contempt the
Democratic institutions of the country, and injure
in the estimation of the people the very cause of
liberty itself. It is said, and well known, that votes
at Albany are bought and sold as an article of
marketable value. Some years ago these transac-
tions were on a smaller scale, and done secretly.
But practice and custom have enlarged the opera-
tions, and they are now performed in the open
light. They are entrusted to a body of lobby
agents, who have sprung up to conduct this busi-
ness, and who announce openly that they under-
stand all the springs of action, and that money en-
trusted to them can be spent effectively in attaining
the object aimed at. As the profit derived from
the trade of legislating becomes better known,
that trade is worked on more scientific principles.
Where Acts were introduced, intended to have a
beneficial result, some members could see no harm in
receiving a douceur for giving their votes, as they
would have given them without the bribe. From accept-
ing the bribe for voting in the way their conscience
directed, there was another step—and a very con-
siderable one—to voting against conscience in con-
sideration of a douceur. But a higher flight than
this has been reached. Bills are now introduced of
an outrageous character, aimed to effect the ruin of
classes and trades. These bills are not intended to
be passed. Their object is to create alarm; and
those they compromise speed off to Albany, to stop
the passage of the measure, where they are met by
the lobby agents, and, when thoroughly plucked, sent
home. Humiliating as are the facts disclosed, we re-
gret to say that New York is not the only State in
which such corruption prevails. The re-assuring part
of the story is, that, however damaging to the na-
tional character, and Republican institutions, the
Press of York does not hesitate to expose in the
strongest terms, the iniquity of these proceedings.
There can be no question of the truth of the state-
ment that many of the best men avoid the con-
tamination of politics. It isnot by such means that
the State Legislatures in which these practices pre-
vail will be reformed. It is not by mourning over
such depravity that these proceedings will cease;
A higher tone of public morality must be intro-
duced, and the member proved to be guilty of
accepting bribes for his vote, must, whether he
escapes legal consequences or not, be stamped and
ousted from the society of honest men. If an
election to a Legislature means an advancement to
a post which is to be turned by every means of
chicanery to the individual's private gain, the worst
style of adventurers will make the most vigorous
push for these seats. Those, less needy, pos-
sessing a character to lose, will not allow
hemselves to be nominated, and therefore, the
;eadency will be rapidly to deteriorate. Against
his the Press must "flake a stand, and endeavour to
he utmost to arrest the tendency by the force of

public opinion. To the Tribune is due the credit of
striking a heavy blow at these pernicious practices,
and it well becomes the great organ of the nationa'
party to lead iu the attempt to demolish so immora
a system. It is painful to reflect how great the
scandal is, and how vast the injury that results,
from these exposes of universal suffrage. No doubt
the States have to fight againzt the overwhelming
difficulty of bestowing on ignorant immigrants a
privilege which is, indeed, the right only, of educated
men. That Universal Suffrage is the true theory
of Government is, we believe, sound—where all
have attained to that amount of education which
enables a man to read and write, and to apply that
knowledge to some degree of moral and intellectual
culture. But no effort on the part of the Govern-
ment can secure this result for the United States,
so long as the ignorance of Europe is freely poured
into the country. "It is not, however," says the
Nation, " the poor devils of grog-shopkeepers whom
the Fenians send to the Legislature from this city
who drive this trade. These are knaves, to be sure ;
but if they were amongst honest men, they would
have to live by sucking their own paws. The main
body of the corrupt drove are lawyers, farmers, and
wbat not from the interior of the State, Republi-
cans in politics, and sound enough on all the great
issues of the day to please Thaddeus Stevens himself ;
and there is probably not a man of them who would
not write a noble letter' on the use of money at
elections' that would draw tears from a gorgon.
This sad and humiliating story—and, let us add,
New York is not the only State of which it may be
told—is related with becoming horror by men who,
in the same breath, deride the notion that a candi-
date's private character is of any consequence as
long as he has been regularly nominated."
The great step to alter this state of things is to
establish a higher moral tone on the subject of
bribery. if the member who received a bribe
was publicly branded, and universally recognised
throughout the country as having been guilty of
an infamous act, no more boasting would be heard
from these smart people of the prices to which they
had run up their venal votes. This, it is probable,
is within the power of the Press to accomplish, and,
if so, no duty can be more clear.
Infamous, however, as is the state of things that
obtains in Albany, the system in force in England
approximates too closely to this venal voting to
place those in this country in a position in which
they can with safety throw stones. Parliament
itself is elected by bribery,—with this important
difference, that the members pay instead of
receiving the money. 'lbis simply resolves
itself into the electors, not the elected being
the bribed. Too often the cotes of the mem-
-I.ers are influenced by the promise of places
either for themselves or their friends. The
lobby-agents of the British Parliament are a set
of solicitors, contractors, and hangers-on, who
coach through railway and other bills. English
Corporations are corrupt in every department, and
no contract has a free and fair field. Bad, how-
ever, as is the state of things in England, the man
elected to a position of trust is not to be found who
openly boasts of the price he has managed to
extract for his vote. The people may be sure that
there is some safeguard in the knowledge, which
every man so placed in this country must feel, that
if he is discovered in accepting a bribe, the stigma
will attach to him for life.—Anglo-American Times.

AN AMERICAN GRACE DARLING.—Ida Lewis,
daughter of the keeper of the Lime Rock Light-house,
Rhode Island, rowed out to a distant island on a Sunday
morning recently, and rescued a man who for four hours
had been lying upon the rocks, wet from the storm, and
exhausted in body, his boat having been capsized, and
there being no mea aof escape possible. Tho brave girl
took up the inanimate body, placed it in her wherry, and
pulled across the harbour to Newport. This is the fifth
instance in which this intrepid young woman has rendered
valuable assistance to persona in peril of a watery grave.
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General Beauregard does not entitle him to add to the
reputation of soldier and patriot that of statesman or
political philosopher."
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