Mr. Disraeli's Bill against Bribery does not get on, perhaps
is not intended to get on. As Mr. Mill said on Thursday, "the Minister who sowed bribery broadcast with one hand holds in the other a Bill for the suppression of bribery. The Bribery Bill meets the irony of the situation." The Bill was referred on Monday to a Select Committee, after a speech in which Mr. Bernal Osborne told the House that it was hopelessly insincere, that there were not thirty members who had obtained their seats by fair means, and that the Upper House was full of men who had obtained peerages by fighting counties, over all which statements members laughed joffily, as men do when recounting school-boy escapades. And there is not one of these men who would not prosecute this journal, if it asserted that instead of giving bribes he had taken one, been tempted, instead of tempter. In the course of the bad discussion, Mr. Sandford, for the first time in his life, made a good suggestion,—that the Commission of Inquiry be paid for by the borough, in order that the ratepayers may hate the bribees.
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