The Express. — 1853-03-23 (London, England)

BLVF.SKIN of the electioneer ing Joxsritax WILD (taking the character as an abstraction and typical of a class); by his desperate attempt to obtain redress or vengeance of the agent who first took his money, and then l sacrificed him to the arrangements of his party. the Colonel has cut the throat of Parliamentary agenting. lILUESK N'S exploit caused so much excitement that from that moment the trade of JONATHAN WILD was at an end. Honest men would no longer employ the tutor and employer of thieves, and thieves would no longer trust or deal with one who sold their blood. But though the trade was spoiled for the great scale in which JONATHAN carried it on, it was long prosecuted in a small way by retail dealers. Many years after JONATHAN'S death, a band of these minor traders in guilt were convicted and punished; and on their trial one of the witnesses against them, when asked his trade, replied, " I work occasionally at my trade of shoemaking, and sometimes catch a thief." Something of the same kind we must expect to witness—if the Legislature do not interfere—in the event of the Derby and Norwich revelations suppressing the great JONATHAN WILDS of Parliamentary corruption. We shall have a set of small traders in elections rising up, who may describe themselves as—" Solicitors iu practice—who sometimes buy and sometimes betray a borough." It is a most anomalous feature in our electioneering law, the impunity which has hitherto attended the " agent" in affairs of electoral corruption. 'Die bribing aspirant to a scat in Parliament has sometimes been punished, and the elector selling his vote—nay, whole constituencies guilty of that offence, have sometimes been punished; but the agent has always been allowed to escape scot free. Now, in no other class of offences against law do we find the same immunity extended to the hired agent of illegality. The bravo who stabs for hire is regarded as more culpable, more deprased, than the murderer who stabs at the impulse of veugvance. How comes it that the eon uptor of electors for hire, the professional trader in corruption, is regarded as less culpable than he who commits the offence prompted by excessive or misdirected personal vanity or ambition? Apparently the anomaly is attributable to mistaken notions of what is called professional duty. The lawyer is not expected, not allowed, to betray his client—to reveal what has been imparted to him in professional consultations. But morality and the security of society require that this privilege of secrecy extended to the profession shall have its limits. The solicitor may conceal the perpetrated offences of the client who consults him as to tho beet mode of escaping punishment ; but the solicitor may not with impunity conceal the intimations of his client that he is going to commit an offence; much less may he with impunity instruct his client how to commit the offence ; and least of all may he with impunity commit it for him. The corrupt electioneering agent is guilty of all three violations of the law. He defeats the ends of justice by concealing his knowledge that a crime is about to be committed; he becomes an accessory before the fact by teaching how the crime may be most safely committed ; and he becomes a principal by active participation io it for a reward whereby he becomes a sharer in the gains. The truth is, that the electioneering agent is the most culpable, the basest, and the most dangerous of all the parties to electioneering corruption. He sins against the clearest knowledge ; there is aoadmixture of any one redeeming motive in his sordid impulses; he perpetrates the offence with a skill and dexterity in avoiding the windy side of the law, that renders it comparatively safe, and encourages by impunity. To render the agent equally amenable to the law with the principal will not destroy electoral corruption ; no one measure can do that • but it will render the perpetration of the offence less easy, less safe, and thus diminish its frequency. And it will tend to extirpate a most discreditable and corrupting class from what is commonly understood to be respectable society. The moment is propitious for an attack upon the Parliament ary