The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-28 00:00:00

4d.
STAMPED sd.

between London-bridge and Woolwich. By latest
accounts received from the Dreadnought, two cases
only have occurred in the districts visited by the
medical staff of the Seamen's Hospital Society as
against 1f admitted on board the Belleisle, since the
commencement of the inspection, from the - docks
and other parts of the Thames between Woolwich
and Gravesend. As a great many cases of diarrhon
have been treated by the Dreadnought medical staff
and river visitors, the above result is a fair proof of
the beneficial effects of systematic inspection, and
of the great importance of checking the disease in its
incipient stage. More than 1,800 visits are made
weekly, so that every vessel moored or at anchor for
more than 18 hours receives a call. Patients still con-
tinue to come from the. Commercial Docks (Surrey
side), which has furnished to the Belleisle a larger
number of cases than any one district on or about
the river.

PLYMOUTH, Aug. 27.—Two cases of cholera have
taken place here in a home for fallen women. The
matron died to-day. The opening of a choked
drain in the premises is believed by the medical men
to have caused the outbreak.

The following is the return of deaths from cholera
and diarrhcea in London registered on Saturday,
Aug. 25 :
c olera. Diarrhcm
' *West districts- ..." ... 0 2
North districts 1 ... 4
Central districts... ... 1 1

- East districts - 25 10
South districts ... 9 5

Total , 36 ... 22

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TlMES.—Before any man forms an opinion on the
expediency, prospects, or nature of Parliamentary
Reform, let him study the story of Great Yarmouth
as contained in the reports of the election commis-
sion now sitting. If it is desirable to understand a
disease before devising a remedy, here is the requi-
site intelligence presented to us, we may almost say,
for the first time. Certainly never was there a pic-
ture of electoral life exhibited to the public with
such completeness or on so extensive a scale. First
of all, however, be it observed that Yarmouth is a
large, populous, and busy town, with 35,000 inha-
bitants and 1500 registered electors. It has a staple
industry of its own, requiring considerable intelli-
gence, courage, and energy of character. Thepeople
themselves are of that true Anglian stock which has
been held superior to the true Saxon lineage of the
South and West. The borough is under no aristo-
cratic influence; no territorial lord can dictate to the
constituency; nor is there any person more formid-
able in the town itself than a wealthy brewer. To
the south of the town, on an elevated ridge above
the river, stretches for nearly a couple of miles the
suburb of Gorleston, concerning which we must
premise that it is no pauperised or squalid district,
but a remarkably pleasant and cheerful hamlet, ten-
anted by inhabitants far removed from destitution or
want. In the summer of last year there was an elec-
tion at Yarmouth, and this is the manner in which
it was conducted : —Sir E. Lacon, the opulent brewer
of whom we lave spoken, stood on the Conservative
side ; and Mr. James Goodson, the chairman of the
Great Eastern Railway Company, stood with him,
both being well known in the town. Against them
appeared, on the Liberal side, two gentlemen from
London, Mr. Brogden and Mr. Marshman ; but
four days before the election Mr. Marshman retired,
and his place was immediately occupied by Mr.
Vanderbyl, also from London, who, as well as Mr.
Brogden, was a stranger to the borough. After the
preliminary canvas the preparations for the actual
contest were as follows :—Mr. Nightingale, Sir Ed-
mund Lacon's partner, took £4,000 in sovereigns,
with which he had previously provided himself, and
sent £2,500 to a man named Cooper, and £5OO to
another man, named Shuckford. Cooper, thus ap-
pointed to the chief agency, forthwith employed
pine sub-agents, two of whom again had subordi-
nates of their own. Shuckford had three agents un-
der him, making in all 16 Conservative agents fur-
nished with money for the express purpose of buying
votes. On the other side, Mr. Brogden some time
before the election sold out Consols sufficient to pro-
duce £6,000, of which about £4,000 was given to
an agent named Jones, and £2,000 to a second
agent, named Edwards. Under Jones and Edwards
again were subaltern +" operators ;" so that altoge-
ther some 30 or 40 persons probably were engaged
as actively as possible in the administration of bribes
to the electors of the borough. Nor did these offi-
cers do their work negligently. They bought up
voters by the hundred—it is hard to say how many
in the whole. At £2O a vote, which is rather above
the average price paid, th,e £lO,OOO expended on the
two sides ought to have purchased 500 electors, but
some of these persons took money from both sides,
and so the calculation becomes uncertain. One wit-
ness reckoned that the Tories had certainly bought
400 votes, and the Liberals only 100: but then he
confessed that he had looked into the statistics on
the former side only, and had rather shut his eyes to
the doings on his own. Mr. Marshman, one of the
candidates, thought the ‘4 doubtful" voters were
about 300 in number ; a more experienced witness
put them at 600. Probably we shall not be far
wrong in assuming that between 400 and 500 elec-
tors out of the 1,432 who went to the poll had re-
ceived bribes from one side or the other. In
other words, a number of voters equal to the
entire constituency of one of our smaller boroughs
took bribes at the Yarmouth election. We
must now proceed to remark, by the light of
the evidence, that neither in these numbers nor in
these doings was there anything at all extraordi-
nary or exceptional. It was all in the natural course
of things at Yarmouth—a course of things which has
prevailed for we cannot say how long. One depo-
nent thought the system of paying the electors for
votes was first regularly established at the election
of Lushington and Harbord in 1806, but another,
well acquainted with local history, traced it to the
year 1754. It was stated in evidence that the late
Mr. Rumbold, a man of perfect respectability, who
represented the borough from 1818 to 1857, ex-
pended £72,000 in retaining the affections of his
constituents, andiSir Edmund Lacon himself, who
had been Mr. Rumbold's colleague, considered that
he must have allotted £l,OOO a-year to the inevit-
able charges of his seat. As to the general charac-
ter of the constituency thus treated, when we say
that nearly one-half of it was venal, we have said
enough to show that bribe-taking could not be con-
fined to the necessitous alone. That the people
who received £2O a-piece were generally people to
Whom £2O would be an object is probable enough,
but they were neither destitute nor ignorant, nor
otherwise ill-conducted citizens. We have said
that Gorleston, in particular, represents no mean or
impoverished suburb : and yet at Gorleston, we are
told, fully half—one witness said two-thirds—of the
electors expect to be paid for their votes. Not the
least secret is made, in this respect, of the
general principles or practices of the constitu-
ency. Although, as might naturally be expected,
each party is anxious to throw on the other the re-
sponsibility of the expenditure on the last occasion,
the Conservatives affirm boldly that they did not
begin to bribe until they believed that the Liberals
were going to buy them out with money brought
from London. Mr. Brogdendeclares with equal con-
fidence that, though he had certainly lodged hist
money at Yarmouth a week before the election, it
was only as a reserve against possible condi:1111cl
y,
and that it was never intended to empliol 17.
hbe 'Der
nor was bribery actually employed ufnte:f.t.
side had rendered the operation onle.
inclined to conclude
An impartial witness would be
opulence
and
self-defence.
. that a resident brewer of considerable
c
nbination with the
large connexions, standing in
chairman of a railway runt:ol
—undue influ-
nfgsuinectoestshe town, would
begin with better prosp
•,„coestrange gentlemen from the
in fact, who was
ence excluded—than
Reform Club. Nightingale,
Aira.l other witnesses, alleged that
supported y
asr essentially Conservative, that it had
the boroughbN-V
Manchester men in 1857, and that
been bought by
Viz from a determination to prevent any such
trick for for the future that the Conservative funds were
provided. On the other hand, it was explained on
behalf of Mr. Brogden that the railway interest was
expected to be neutralized by the shipping interest,
which was opposed to it, and that real Liberal prin-
ciples were powerful enough iu Yarmouth to secure
the return of at least one Liberal if the election were
, pure. We imagine that Mr. Aldred, the Mayor,
told about the truth on the political part of the
question when he said that Conservatism was cer-
tainly uppermostinthe person of Sir Edmund Lacon,
a well-known resident, but that it was uncertain how
it might fare in the person of an unknown candi-
date. As to the bribery, from the history given of
the constituency, we suspect it was simply inevitable
in the event of a contest. The only way of avoid-
ing it was by compromise, which was actually
proposed. It signifies little which side began, Dtit