The Sun.
London, England, 1866-09-18 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TIIE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TlMES.—Totnes is one of those highly-favoured
and respectable boroughs that escaped as a brand
out of the burning of 1832, and that only a few
years ago we should most of us have wished to pre-
serve for at least our time. Always Liberal, ever
basking in the smiles of a great Whig family, and
returning good and useful men, it was once free,
aristocratic, progressive, and even pure. At the
date we have referred to, its Reformers celebrated
their safety and their success by breaking the win-
dows of the opposite faction. For many years they
consulted their principles and their interest, and
accepted the nominees of a family able to do justice
to its adherents. Besides that interchange of social
kindness done in the steward's office, and scarcely
a matter for political remark, the Somersets have
been able tokeep Totnes well on the books of her
Majesty's service, and men who, like the respectable
silversmith on Saturday, would have felt themselves
insulted by the offer of money, got their sons into
the Admiralty or some other public department
suited to their rank and position. Totnes might
well be proud of its place in our constitutional sys•
tem, and the principles it maintained with so much
advantage to itself. But a greater destiny now
awaits it, and Totnes is likely to offer a stronger
testimony to Reform, and, as should be, at a
larger sacrifice. On the face of the terrible evidence
brought before the Commission—or rather before
the whole world, for select bits are going the round
of the foreign papers—we don't see how Totnes can
escape disfranchisement, and, Totnes disfranchised,
we don't see how a good many other boroughs can
fail to share its fate. But how has this doom come
upon Totnes, and how will it still be a martyr in
the cause of Reform ? Thus wise :—The borough
did its duty as a community of Liberal politicians,
and its virtues had their reward. As the freemen
and burgesses died away their places were taken by
£lO occupiers, who more than doubled, though the
population is little more than it was in 1831. These
people were comparatively independent, and as
Totnes does not naturally offer many openings to
industry and enterprise, they felt all the more the
value of the one little ewe lamb—their vote for the
borough. But it is impossible, daily more and more
impossible, for the highest patronage or even the
largest property to find places for everybody. So
many of the electors of Totnes become disappointed
and Conservative. They found the Seymour family
a King Log, and wanted a King Stork, who should
do either harm or good. The enemy, personated
we will suppose by Mr. Edmonds, peeped over the
walls of this pet little Parliamentary paradise, and
saw the growingdiscontent. Conservatives appeared
to try their faith, and win them from their allegiance
to the Seymours and Reform. The new candidates
were not without personal claims. Mr. Dent had
" opened up the rivers of China." But something
more was necessary to make the new corners as
good as the old, for the electors of Totnes still re-
spected territorial rights, and appreciated territorial
and political favours. So Mr. Dent was also stated
to have millions at his back ; and at the last election

Mr. Heath made a round of morning calls to the
ladies of the electors, offering £3O, £4O, £6O, or
£lOO, according to quality and circumstances, and
without a shadow of doubt that Mr. Edmonds would
repay him every farthing he thus distributed.
Here, then, in a very small space and among a
mere handful of constituents, Alladin's lamp was
brought to bear on opinion almost worn out, and
influences great, but still limited. Men with heavy
mortgages, and others who owed their rent, fly-
men without horses or flies, and wives with many
wants and perhaps many mouths to feed and backs
to cover, were told there was no sin in accepting
any handsome present, and using their influence with
their husbands to vote the way of their bread and
butter. It is odd if in a constituency of 400 there
are not a hundred men to whom £4O is an ob-
ject. The Seymour defences were rapidly under-
mined, and it was possible the work of genera-
tions might be thrown away. What was to be
done ? It was impossible to give everybody a
house or a fly and horse, or the promise of un-
failing employment or a place in the Admiralty.
The sad truth must be told. The Liberals of Totnes
were driven to fight the enemy with his own wea-
pons. If the Conservatives offered £3O, the Libe-
rals offered £5O, or tried to bribe those who had
taken bribes out of the promises they had given.
They fought with house and land, as well as
money. On Friday witnesses swore that they had
been turned out of their houses shortly after vot-
ing against the Liberals. The last contest was
more " spirited" than any before, which means
that people lost their heads, and, with their heads,
their conscience, their self-respect, and their re-
gard for common truth. All this is now flared
out to the light of day. The Commissioners com-
pel the attendance of shifty witnesses till they
evidently make a clean breast. Up to last Friday
some of them were " firm," and, besides continual
evasions, told positive untruths, denying the re-
ceipt of bribes. On Saturday they threw them-
selves on the mercy of the Court, and told every-
thing. It is a story of bribery upon bribery, bid
rising upon bid, and such principle as there had
been at Totnes melting, like flakes of snow, under
the new influence. If a man had principle, he
only felt that it entitled him to a higher bribe
than his neighbour, if he chose to change sides.
One witness confessed to receiving £6O three times
over for his vote. The value of money itself, and
consequently of honourable industry, must be
affected at Totnes by such a shower of unholy spoil.
But let witnesses tell the truth as they please,
and let the Commissioners report as they' please,
what is to stop all this ? At Totnes it is evident
that a hundred men can put their heads together—
as no doubt they are doing months before the elec-
tion—in one way or another, and can obtain what
terms they please. It is vain to tell them that the
receipt of money is morally wrong when they see
the most moral and respectable characters in the
place asking favours from the successful candidates,
and manifestly the better off generally for their sup-
port. They must conclude a political party to be an
understanding for mutual advantage, and if money
happens to be the only form in which their services
can be recognised they will think there is no more
sin in £4O than in a place in the Admiralty, or a
living, or a preference above other applicants for
some local boon. Then if Parliament intends to
deal with bribery more rigorously and searchingly
than it has done hitherto, how can it distinguish
between bribes in money and bribes in house, laud,
place, or employment? A threat is equivalent to a
bribe, for it involves a promise to do no harm to a
man if he proves amenable. But in this way a whole
system founded on intimidation is virtually one of
bribery. Anyhow, it will always be most difficult
to distinguish, and if a refractory elector has been
turned out of his house, that is a fact of the same
political import as the receipt of a bank-note.
But, whatever the bearing of these disclosures and
these questions on the whole controversy, Totnes is
doomed, though without deserving its doom a bit
more than a hundred other boroughs. It must fall
under its own scandal. Upon this and a few similar
precedents we shall at last find our way to the prac-
cal theory of Reform, all the more effectual perhaps
because graduated and progressive.
HERALD.—For some reason, which we confess
ourselves as yet unable to fathom, a portion of the
foreign, and notably of the French and German,
semi-official press has been seized with a violent ac-
cess of alarm and indignation at the hospitalities
about to be offered to the volunteers of England by
our neighbours of Belgium. It is difficult to describe
the agitation into which our contemporaries have been
thrown by the threat of these harmless proceedings.
" Orgy" is the mildest term they can apply to the
festival that is to commence at Brussels on Saturday
next. Nor is the moral aspect of the affair by any
means the least lugubrious that presents itself to
their offended vision. As seen by the light of their
excited imagination, this invasion of Continental
soil by an armed and disciplined English force three
or four hundred strong has far more than a social
significance. It is at the very least a political de-
monstration and of very serious significance—of a
significance, indeed, little less than disastrous, and
portending, according to some of the more vehement
Cassandras of the semi-official press, nothing less
than the imminent destruction and absorption of the
kingdom which has so grievously committed itself.
Now, if it were not for the so-called semi-official
character of some of these journals we should hardly
feel called upon to reply to or to notice ravings so
• utterly ludicrous as these. But unfortunately the
term semi-official, as applied to continental news-
paper literature, is one which those accustomed only
to the boasted independence of English journalism,
very rarely understand. With us a newspaper
adopts—generally speaking, that is to say— a certain
set of opinions, which opinions it holds and advo-
cates in common, probably, with some particular
well-defined party, large or small, which has also
its representatives in the Senate, the clubs, and
wherever men meet together to speak their minds
or support their opinions. If the party with which
it agrees are in power, it has, of course, a better
understanding than others can have of its motives,
actions, or intentions ; and for the most part has
sufficient faith in the general policy of its party to
be cautious in embarrassing its movements by the
untimely advocacy of any peculiar crotchets of its
own. All of which is perfectly compatible with en-
tire independence both of thought and speech, the
surrender of either of which would be by no means a
source of profit, as we should certainly not expect to
find it a matter of self-gratulation. Among our con-
tinental contemporaries, however, to be semi-
official" is a distinction as eagerly claimed as
with us it is difficult to understand. The friends
and supporters of every second or third rate
French or German newspaper are as eager to

avouch its " inspiration" as our Colenses to
disprove that of Holy Writ ; and on the WI
common principle, come ig noturn pro magnifico, Vl_
are somewhat too apt to take them at their o_l'
valuation, and to believe that anything which beat!
even half the seal of official authority must needs r
very terrible and very true. The fact is fortunately
as nearly as possible the reverse. The semi-official„,o
paper is doubtless occasionally made use of bY_.4.B°""or
magnate of its Government, to start some rePor",,t,
ventilate some crotchet, too dangerous or too doll",
ful to be fathered on any really responsible jourc4
but that is all. As a rule it is generally pretty Pi..e
to attach to its utterances just that amount of it:
which can justly be claimed by an organ not su,..
ciently in the confidence of the Government it.,aft
sumes to represent, to be trusted with anything tP*O
has authority, but enjoying just sufficient patron agg
to be terribly afraid of committing itself to any as
that cannot easily be disavowed. In such a case
that to which we are now referring its effusions
have simply no value and no sig in
whate/er
but such as may unhappily be attached to them ill
some eyes by a total misapprehension of the welge.
they bear and the quarter from which they spy
The Brussels fetes have no more to do with poiL,,-
than they have with the history of ancient Gr'iii,
They are simply the expression of a cordial gneclwyro
between two nations which have ever been war
friends and firm allies, the warmer and firmer 0
doubt-
less in that their friendship has been sullied 1120
secret article of aggression or aggrandisement. 1"
months ago, at our own great gathering on IV,I
bledon-common, the hospitality of the citizen uae7r,.
was gladly extended to a party of citizen solw. 0
from Belgium. Pleased with the warm recePtle4
there experienced, and cordially reciprocating t.f,.
goodwill it so well expressed, our Belgian neighbew:,/
take advantage of their own approaching Tir Natio%
to return the compliment there offered, and welet,
to the Belgian capital in peaceful guise the ret,
sentatives of that English force which so espeel.l.
embodies the idea of peace and non-aggro
That Brussels, during the ten days over which t
festival is to last, will present a gay and brilliant
scene—a scene well worth the travelling fatty eer
than Brussels to see, and well calculated to arel:,d
a sense of the highest satisfaction at the CO
feeling so warmly existing between the two CO
tries—is doubtless true enough. But it will nom
be a political demonstration than it will be a frill
e' " orgy," and those who, on their own semi-ow 4
authority, would attribute to the Government 04
possibility of such misapprehension, or any thought
of making use of the event as an excuse for aggrel3of
sion, give only another proof that their meal)!
ascertaining the real bearing of the policy of Injeei;
rial France is in truth about on a par with tu 0
capacity to divine or to understand it. Of thig7o
least, we can assure them. If the clearest and leo
solemn declarations have any binding influence vio
the powers which now govern France, Belgiuma
perfectly secure. That every inducement has
held out in certain quarters to tempt an aggrau" d•
ment of the Empire, at the expense of an unoffe: it
ing but helpless neighbour, is true enough. J3ll tic
is also true that Francd has in the most ernPlal, 00
manner disclaimed every intention of acting 011,40
criminal a suggestion, and that her conduct hit
has been most loyally in accordance with the assis."'„
ances thus given. Those who would have us
..
lieve that the harmless exercise of a graceful in ',"of
national hospitaiity will be made the pretext iv
abandoning this honourable course can respect
Government as little as they represent it.