The River Falls times. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1894-1933, 1897-03-16
The Danger Of
Money in Elections.
ADDRESS OF cHARL-, ID. GREGORY, BEFORE THE WIS
consN ACADEMY or SCIENCES, DECEMBER 1894


turn the scale, anu the great body of
honest men must submit to masters
unfairly chosen and the mercenaries
dominate the elections. We must
hunt down and destroy these petty cor
ruptions, TO borrow figure from the
Plym4ey Letters, as a bourgomaster
hunts rat in Dutch dyke, for lear 1t
should flood province"
The office which particularly allufes
wealth in this country is that of soma
tor Of the United States The great
fortunes of the state vie with each
other in disinterested contributions to
the campaign funds of the several can
didates for the legislature, and the
representative of the people takes his
seat in the legislative hall with chat
tel mortgage on his body and soul
held by this or that senatorial aspir-
ant. The idea of barter and sale is
scrupulously avoided in conversation
and the contract is disguised under the
words gratitude and party service.
This is not whispered or in most OF
our states, and if the practice exists,
such a search light as the Missouri law
will help to reveal and amend it. Ii
our legislators are sold to rich buyers,
let us insist on knowing the price and
the purchaser.
If such dealings are blameless there
is no harm, if guilty there is great
good, in publishing them. The meth
DDS of an honest election can stand
like primeval innocence naked but
not ashamed.
| hope Wisconsin will not fall be-
hind her sister states in this matter.
I believe our legislature ready and
willing to lead in this good reform, but
if they are not then I hope that a ris-
ing tide of public opinion will induce
them to leglslate better than they
wish, and in the we'll known words of
Fernando Wood will persuade them
ito Dander little to the moral sense
of the community" We must say of
the system of modern corruption as
Lord Chatham, the noble defender of
the infant liberties of this country said
of the rotten borough system of Eng
land: eff it does not drop it must be
amputated."
1t behooves all poor men, and most
men are poor: it behooves all honest
men, and most men are honest, to see
to it that the buying and selling of
offices be effectually provided against,
and to maintain what Jefferson in his
first inaugural called a jealous care of
the right of election by the people.
That reform which England has in
the past twelve years so well achieved
against customs of corruption more
wide and deep than any we have to
meet, in the next twelve months, now
that some of the sisterhood have nobly
led the way, all the states of our union
should nobly accomplish. They have
seen these new laws turning the light
into the dark places of politics, and as
on that first day God saw the light that
it was good, so will they. They can
not and they dare not deny to all our
people those guarantees for the tran
guilty, purity and freedom of elections
already assured to Englishmen. It
was the profane and shameless jest OF
an Irish Judas that he thanked God
that he had a country to sell. The
venal voter, though he boasts less
loudly, betrays as basely.
The law of the land must see to it
that the corrupt rich dare not buy, and
the degraded poor dare not sell, the
honor and safety of the state; and
public opinion, stronger and more far
reaching than any statute, higher and
better than any enactment but aided
md enforced by adequate laws, must
each every voter in the land to say,
With our good Quaker poet as he takes
his ballot at the polls:
The wide world has not wealth to buy
he power in my right hand"