The Sun.
London, England, 1859-08-18 00:00:00

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the world knew that it was agreed that they should
resort to the same habit of expenditure ; and it was
considered, in fact, a legitimate exercise of their
wealth and their power. In the same way, if a
contest took place in a borough, it was some lead-
ing landed proprietor or some influential family
of the neighbourhood who contested with another
Individual having the same pretensions as himself,
and they fought the election of some borough amid
14 or 20 days of saturnalia, extravagance, and cor-
ruption. There again it was considered so much a
matter of course, and it was so ennobled in men's minds
by seeing it patronised by the titled and the great,
that these things were passed over. We read of them
in history, and very little notice was taken of them.
(Hear.) But now, gentlemen, we have another class
of aspirants for Parliament altogether. During
the last general election, for instance, I have seen a
new element in our system of electoral corruption;
we have had a number of gentlemen who have come
over from Australia, where, I suppose, they have
been successful at the diggings, for they have
brought over their nuggets and administered them
in the shape of £5O notes ; they have gone to some
little borough and fought their battles and bribed
just as their betters did 50 years ago. Now, I have
great hopes when this system is resorted to by par-
ties who have none of the prestige of the nobility,
that very likely it will be treated very differently
by the people and by Parliament, and that some
plan will be resorted to to put it down. I remem-
ber when duelling in this country was so regularly
a mode of meeting a certain description of insults
that if a man holding a certain position in society
received an affront at the hands of his equal, he was
obliged to meet him in deadly combat as a conse-
quence, or he would have been banished from the
social life of his equals. Well, I remember that
some linendrapers' assistants took it into their
heads to go down one Sunday morning to Worm-
wood Scrubs, orsome place where the nobility used
and they began to fight
to carry on that pastime,
duels ; but as soon as linendrapers assistants
took to duelling it became very infamous in
the eyes of the upper classes. The consequence was
that some of those gentry were sent to Newgate,
and now nothing would be so ridiculous as to resent
an insult by going out and fighting a duel about it.
I am very much in hopes that, since this system of
bribery and corruption has fallen into the hands of
such as I have described, those gentlemen coming
home from the Australian diggings, or from their
broad acres and herds, and rushing into local mar-
kets, and offering by the expenditure of £4,000 or
£5,000 to buy the seat of some little dirty borough
in the west of England—l have very strong hopes
that such a system will not be so fashionable as it
has been, and very likely we shall succeed in having
those parties prosecuted criminally—l say crimi-
nally. Let them be indicted criminally, and let
the consequence of their conviction be a few
months at Newgate, or in the House of Cor-
rection, and if an ex-M.P. be sent there, and made
to wear the prison dress, and have his hair shaved,
I have no doubt in the world it would do very
much to put an end to this bribery and corruption.
(Laughter and cheers.) But now, gentlemen, this
is a much wider question. Ido not mean to say
that this is the only way in which our electoral
system is to be reformed. I shall have something
more to say about that to-morrow evening, when I
believe I am to meet the whole body of ray consti-
tuents, to whom will properly belong the greater
development of that question ; but this I will say,
that I look upon all the present attempts and pre-
tended measures for putting an end to this system
of corruption as insincere on the part of the House
of Commons. (Cheers.) There is a rule resorted
to where bribery has been proved in certain cases
of ordering commissioners to proceed to a town and
inquire into these proceedings. Now I will tell
you what that amounts to. Your select committees
that sit in the House of Conimons proceed to make
np a pile of blue-books after every general election,
which I once, about five years ago, took the trouble
to measure and to weigh : this pile of blue-books
was just four feet high, and weighed rather over a
cwt., and I will undertake to say that these records
of the delinquencies of these boroughs were never
read by half-a-dozen people. Another device of
the House of Commons is to send out commissioners
to inquire into the proeeedings at particular places
where they have reason to suppose the corruption
is more than usually vile. What does that amount
to ? Two or three young barristers are sent down
to a city like Gloucester, and there pass a few
months in the summer very pleasantly, and hear
stories from Tom, Jack, and Harry, and prepare a
huge blue-book, and in six or 12 months that is
presented to Parliament. The report is more volu-
minous than the reportwe had before, and if six men
read the report of the committee of the House of
Commons when the interest in the matter was fresh
not three will open the second report when there are
other things occupying their attention. The conse-
quence is that you are put to enormous expense for
these commissioners, and no result comes from them,
and no result is intended to come from them. I voted
myself the other day in Parliament against the issu-
ing of a commission in the case of Glocester. Nobody
will suppose I so voted because I wished to screen
that or any other borough from inquiry; but I knew
the futility, the utter valuelessness of that inquiry,
and therefore would not lend myself to what I knew
was the perpetuation of a delusion. (Cheers.) I
say, any man who is content to resort to only the
existing means of putting down corruption must
have larger credulity than I possess. I have no faith
in the existing means, and I won't lend myself to a
delusion, or practise those means any longer. What
you want, besides such a plan as I have spoken of, is,
for your Parliament to allow at least the experiment
of the ballot. (Loud cheers.) I don't speak of the
ballot as a cure for all evils, or as a political mea-
sure mixed up with other questions of organic
change. I speak now of it only as a means of pre-
venting to a large extent the exercise of this gross
corruption, and as a moral instrument to check the
growth of that rottenness which is sapping the
foundation of our electoral system. (Cheers.) You
have all observed, I dare say, in the accounts that
have been published of the recent election commit-
tees, that when there has been a question of bribery,
particularly in the smaller borough, the price of the
votes has risen just in proportion as the day ad-
vanced. That while the pall has been going on a
vote has been worth probably £5 at 1Q o'clock, £lO
at 12 o'clock, £5O at 3 o'clock, £lOO at half-past 3,
and in some instances £250 a few minutes before the
clock struck four. Again you have seen wherever you
have had ruffianism and rowdyism, if I may use an
American phrase, that party which we call the
" roughs" at an election are called into request. It
has been a hustle and a jostle of electors just at the
critical time of the polling, when, probably, the
scale might be turned by the forced absence of one
of the electors. We saw a trial the other day of
a gallant admiral who tried to record his
vote in a borough in the West of England ;
but he was seized by the roughs, who
not knowing that he was a valuable servant of the
Crown, wearing her Majesty's livery, carried him
off, and prevented his going to the poll. (Laughter.)
Let us, while these facts are fresh in our observa-
tion, see their bearing on the question of vote by
ballot. If you voted by ballot the state of the poll
would never be known until the voting was over.
(Cheers.) You would have none of this tumult and
excitement ; the great merit and the great recom-
• mendation of the ballot is this, that it would pro-
mote order, decorum, and morality in taking the
poll. lam by no means certain, and I say it in all
frankness, that the ballot would have a very deci-
sive effect in forwarding any one particular party's
interest at the poll. lam not prepared to say my
views in regard to public questions would be more
represented in the ballot-box than they are now by
open voting. I think very likely that the party—
the political party—that most dreads the ballot
would sometimes most profit by it ; but this I say,
any one who has inquired as to the conduct of elec-
tions in America, in Switzerland, in France, in Spain,
and anywhere the ballot is adopted, and will com-
pare them with the tumult, the violence, the blood-
swhietdn,e tshs eatdi:gusting and hideous corruption we
as a moral engine, elections—l say nobody can doubt
the means of repressing these
excesses, the galeieas
expedient, we can I!' is the best resource, the best
one illustrative (Cheers.) I will mention
fact which I acquired in America
on this subject. understand, I am not going
Co
to quote America as a where you should go
for imitation in everything
country
her political
as
institutions, which are n for us in some re-
spects as ours would be unfitted for them. (Cheers.)
But this I may say passing, that till:White men
of the United States have a theory of
which they have laid down in their government
astinstitutions,
which if the human instrument be equal to the
political machine, means to deal justly and fairly
by every man in their community. But now
-
T
con-
fine myself to one fact that was given to
me ; .11 My
travels in America. I was speaking to a gentleman
—whose letter I may read, for it is in but few
words—whose name (Mr. Randall) is known to
some of our statesmen here, for I remember he gave
evidence before a committee of the House of Com-
mons upon which I sat to inquire into the mode of
proceeding of our Houses of Parliament in order to
furnish information as to the rule of the Congress
of the United States. He is a man standinghigh,
both socially and politically. He mentioned this
fact in conversation with me, and, wishing that I
should have the full benefit of the information
under his own signature, he wrote me a letter after
I left Philadelphia, where the gentleman lives (and
I shall take care to have
it published), addressed to
me at Washington ; it contains theselines, " I have
been for 50 years connected with political and party
movements
movements in Philadelphia, and Iv en knew avote
b ought or sold." (Cheers.) ThateF
is one of the
lare,Test cities in America, and contains
one of the