21 FEBRUARY 1852, Page 14

MR. COPPOCX.

IT would seem that, however Mr. James Coppock may be a mem- ber of the Government for certain purposes, it is " unattached." The connexion is one of that kind which can be dissolved the mo- ment it is seen ; and as soon as any question of Liberal purism in elective affairs arises, Mr. Coppock is given up to be hunted. Nay, the stoical abandonment goes further. Lord Claude Hamil- ton asks sarcastically, whether Mr. Roebuck, a purist, does not be- long to the Reform Club, which is also Mr. Coppock's club ; and Mr. Roebuck, after accepting, on his own. interpretation, the ad- mission that Mr. Coppock would never have " dared " to interfere in any affair of his, explains that he goes little to the club, and does not at all meddle with its management. Mr. Coppock's of- fence is the having been an agent in elections which were not pure : that is held so infamous that Lord Claude Hamilton per- sonally accuses a gentleman of belonging to the same club ; Roebuck virtually and virtuously disclainul the imputed club- fellow ; and not a man on the Liberal side ventures to stand up in defence of that faithful ally. He must be an infamous man, then, that same Coppock! Now, how many of those disowning Members have dispensed with the services of the cleverest of the Parliamentary agents P Is there a candidate in difficulties, on the side specially arrayed against bribery and corruption, which does not find a sure refuge in Cleve- land Row ? If he is infamous, what are they And has not the other side its Anteros, its Coppock of the Carlton?—Let him that is without sin cast the first stone.

They indeed are worse. To corruption they add hypocrisy. They come forth from the political casino with clean shirt-collars, and pretend they have walked from a totally different direction, wholly ignorant of the disreputable street round the corner. Cop- pock himself has a kind of rough honesty about him, that is above the timid vice which apes virtue. He is a man of his word : if an Edwards is disappointed in his expectation, everybody feels that it is not Mr. Coppock's fault. It is he that is prepared to expose the whole system, from Abingdon to Yeovil, at a blow ; while it is Lord John Russell who reprieves the condemned boroughs, and teaches them to hide their diminished heads in the pare bosoms of other virgin boroughs.

"Mortua quin etiam jungebat corpora vivis."

He allies the pure to the morally dead, reckless of the fatal cor- ruption that must ensue to the healthy ; and, affecting to rescue the proclaimed sinners of the constituency from the clutches of Coppock, he makes those aged and experienced Magdalena the de- coys to bring other prey to the abjured agency. But all the while, he knows not Coppock, nor do any of them !

Coppock is given up ; boroughs are disfranchised, or to be dis- franchised by a slow process of chronic prosecution, one after the other; but the origin of the disease is untouched. It is not the existence of small boroughs which makes corruption, still less do the tribe of Coppock own a primary and substantive existence ; they are but the consequences : the supply follows the demand, the dealer both ; and the demand for corrupt boroughs originates with Members themselves. If they are in earnest about the cure, with themselves it lies. The root of the evil lies in the fact, that they, "honourable Members," consent to sit in that national coun- cil on a false and fraudulent tenure. They disfranchise St. Alban's; they disown Coppoek ; they laugh at Jacob Bell, the detected Member, for being frank even after detection ; but neither prosti- tute borough, nor pander, nor plucked gull, would exist, if it were not for themselves, honourable Spartans, who sit to disfranchise, disown, and laugh, on detection. If they are virtuous in their hearts, they will turn round upon themselves, and black-ball each other ; or, in the dignity of still more patriotic penitence, they will refuse to sit any longer on that false and fraudulent tenure— will walk out of the House, and not come in again except with honest credentials and on an honest footing. One such act as that would have abolished the system ; which is no more created by a St. Alban's or by a Coppock than a flower-pot creates the blooming rose-tree which is planted there, or the parasitical insects that live upon it. Corrupt elections are created by corrupt Members ; and the trouble arises from the fact that all the gentlemen of our day are not gentlemen enough to feel degraded by taking advantage of the tools which they disclaim with all the enthusiastic hauteur of a burglar disciaiming his jemmy.