CANDIDATES AND ELECTION AGENTS.*
FEW people can discourse of the dangers and difficulties which beset candidates and agents at elections with more knowledge than Mr. Loader, who was election-agent for Sir Charles Mike, and registration-agent in the old borough of Chelsea,—one of the largest, most unwieldy, and least corporate of constituen- cies in the United Kingdom. This work, therefore, comes with authority, and is worthy of being studied with diligence. The upshot of it is that Mr. Loader, like most of those who have given attention to the subject, considers that bribery and cor- ruption are more likely to be put an end to by the check put on excessive expenditure by sir Henry James's Act than by all the penalties promulgated against specific offences. A further check has since been imposed by the Redistribution Act, through the greater size of constituencies, and the consequent inability to corrupt on a sufficiently large scale. When a borough of 30,000 population or under is the exception instead of the rule, the practical obstacles to corruption are indefinitely increased. Instead, therefore, of the two-and-a- half millions of money which Mr. Loader considers a low esti- mate for the expenses of the election of 1880, we may reasonably hope that the present election may not cost more than a million. So large a proportion of the present candidates depend on their brains and their eloquence, rather than on their wealth and position, that they could not, even if they wished, afford to exceed the maximum allowed by the Act. The old freemen of the small boroughs, who caused the corruption of places like Sandwich, and whose corruption was an immemorial tradition, have been rendered an infinitesimal portion of a big constituency, when they have not been actually disfranchised. The penalties, too, are more severe, and more likely to be enforced now that the Public Prosecutor has been called in to redress the balance of justice. Altogether, we may hope, for the first time in our • The Candidates and BlecticurAoent's Guide for Parliamentary and Municipal Elections. By John Loader, Barrister•at-Law. London : Stevens and Sons. history, to get a free, unbiassed verdict from the people of England on the issues set before them.
Mr. Loader's book will show the candidate and his agent how to avoid any danger of the verdict being upset by some chance delinquency of their own, while it will most assuredly impress them with the necessity of insisting, in season and out of season, to every one of their supporters, on the danger to which their cause will be exposed by a single act of immoral or extravagant zeal. The first caution required is that every or any one may be an agent. The prin- ciples of election agency, as compared with those of agency at common law, are of much greater breadth and indefiniteness; and the Judges have refused to define agency, because, " when they have laid down a rule as to what constitutes agency, in the next election petition which they try, they find that rule has been evaded." Practically, every active politician who assists in endeavouring to secure his candidate's return becomes an agent. Probably every member of a " caucus," or political association which takes part in an election, or the proceedings, other than mere registration, prior to an election, becomes an agent ; the active members of it, and the officers, can hardly help being agents. It is, therefore, a satisfactory reflection for the candidate that if his seat is endangered by any corrupt or illegal act on the part of an agent, the agent him- self will, at all events, commit it at the risk of the loss of his liberty, and at that of the person who is corrupted also ; corrupt treating, for instance, which formerly only sub- jected the person treated to an incapacity to vote, now sub- jects him to fine and imprisonment with hard labour, and the treater is liable to the same penalty.
Yet there are few pitfalls for the honest men. The most noticeable is that of " volunteer and unauthorised expenditure in printing electioneering squibs" which might easily be indulged in by a zealous partisan of a semi-literary turn of mind. If the object of the squib is to promote the return of a candidate, it ought to be ordered and paid for by the election-agent, and included in the returned expenses. Again, paying for a band of music for the conquering or con- quered hero's procession to the polling-booths would bean illegal payment, whoever pays for it ; and it is almost certainly illegal to adorn your footman with ribbons- of the candidate's colours if you have to buy them for the purpose. But, on the other hand, a great many pitfalls are discovered by over-sharp politicians which do not exist, and the Conservatives take particular delight in insinuating ima- ginary dangers, which they meet with unnecessary pre- cautions. For instance, the Act forbids the printing or publication of any " bill, placard, or poster having reference to an election without the name and address of the printer and publisher" on the face of it. Sir Charles Dilke's address to the electors of Chelsea was issued on a post-card, and the Conserva- tives of Chelsea rashly hold that as the post-card had no printer's or publisher's name on it, an offence against what Mr. Loader calls the " C.I.P.P.A.," or in Parliamentary English, the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act, was thereby com- mitted. So great is their own caution that even the tickets of admission to their meetings have the names of the printer and publisher on them. In point of fact, it is, of course, obvious that no amount of legal ingenuity could construe a ticket for a meeting, which will go into the waistcoat-pocket, or a half- penny post-card sent through the post, into a " bill, placard, or poster." But it pleases the Conservatives to thiuk that there are terrible dangers in the Liberal measure to secure purity of elections. There are dangers many and great to those who rely on influence and not on principles to secure the return of their party. The lady, for instance, who in a London constituency last week sent to a well-to-do tradesman (who probably could have bought her up twice over), and informed him that if he would vote blue he should have the custom of a certain house in a certain square, was possibly not aware that she was guilty of bribery, and rendered herself liable to imprisonment for one year with hard labour. To the can-
didate and agent who rely on their political programmes and per- sonal capacity alone, there are no pitfalls in the Corrupt Practices Act. If there are pitfalls on every hand for those who deviate from the straight path, so much the better. We want to secure in Parliament the true expression of popular opinion, not the expression of people acting under threats or promises of in- dividuals, whether Tory or Radical, or even under the mere hope of pleasing their immediate superiors.
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