THE CHESTER ELECTION PETITION.
THE advantage of giving the decision in Election petitions to the Judges, and not to the House of Commons,has been more conspicuous since the last general election than it ever was before. There have been an unusual number of hard cases, and hard cases are a very great burden on the con- sciences of amateur Judges. They have a feeling, not alto- gether without justification, that they are bound to take into account the particular circumstances which make the case hard ; that unless they do this, they will be administering technical, not substantial, justice ; that if the rule of law seems unduly hard, they, not being lawyers, may temper it in a way in which the professional Judge is rightly pre- cluded from tempering it. Even the Election Judges have occasionally been moved to expressions of pity at the disproportion between the offence and the punishment, when the punishment falls on one man and the offence is committed by another. They, however, have understood that their pity must not be allowed to influence their decisions, and that though the bribery may have been committed without the knowledge and against the will of the candidate, it is upon his head that the Statute visits it. It would have been very diffi- cult for a Committee of the House of Commons to have been equally stern. They would have sympathised so keenly with the Member whom it lay with them to seat or unseat, that they might hare thought it almost unnatural to exclude feeling altogether from consideration. In the latest and most striking case, that of Chester, both the Judges declared that Mr. Dodson and Mr. Lawley had wished the election to be conducted on the purest possible principles. If a Committee of the House of Commons had been equally con- vinced of this, they might have been tempted to think that it was Mr. Dodson and Mr. Lawley that they were trying, and if they deserved to be acquitted, how could it be fair to unseat them ? A Judge can remember more easily that it is not the conduct of the respondents to the petition only that he is trying, but the conduct of the party by whose efforts the respondents have been returned. From this point of view, there is no injustice in punishing a man for another's offence. The object of the bribers being the return of a particular can- didate, the most effectual way of punishing them for resorting to unlawful means to compass that object, is to enact that the use of such means shall defeat the object. This is plain com- mon sense, when it is argued out in cold blood, and by a Judge who has no necessary knowledge of the man whose fate hangs on the result. But the House of Commons, if it had retained its jurisdiction over Election petitions, might occasion- ally have found it difficult to see it in this light. In Mr. Dodson's case, for example, it might have been greatly tempted to show him some mercy. He has been returned again without opposition, so that it can hardly be said that the corruption which vitiated his first election really prevented the con- stituency from getting its own way. He is a Cabinet Minister, and even his opponents in Chester would, consequently, rather be represented by him than by any less distinguished Liberal Member. The measures which the Local Government Board have in hand will be delayed, and possibly imperilled, by his temporary absence from Parliament. These considerations would go for nothing, if Mr. Dodson lay under the faintest suspicion of having himself known what was going on. But when public and private advantage jump together, and an inno- cent man may be saved from annoyance bv a decision which does wrong to no one, and good to many, it needs the practised indifference of a Judge to detect the sophistry that underlies this reasoning,—and it is well that recent legislation has brought this practised indifference into play.
For sophistry, after all, it is. What is the motive of the Legislature in making bribery illegal ? Not the protection of the voter, for he no longer needs protection, even against him- self. It may be assumed that a man who sells his vote for a sovereign is the best judge of the value he himself sets on it. If he likes to sell it to a candidate who offers him that sum. instead of offering to support this or that kind of legislation, why should the law interfere ? Now, too, the voter has the remsdy in his own hands. He can take the sovereign, and vote in accordance with his political fancies all the same. On no possible ground, therefore, can it be needful for Parliament to interfere in his behalf. The reason, we take it, why Parlia- ment essays to prevent bribery is that it wishes the Members of the House of Commons to represent the effective political forces existing in the constituency, and a corrupt voter is not an effective political force. If the election were perfectly pure and no money were to be had from either side, the man who sells his vote for a sovereign would probably not vote at all. Why should he give himself the trouble of going to the poll, to help one or other of two parties, in neither of which he takes the slightest interest ? It is quite possible, therefore, that in a corrupt constituency the effective political forces— the voters, that is to say, who really care for the return of this or that candidate—may be altogether s vamped by voters who are not a political force at all. The constituency may be represented not by the candidate whose views command the largest amount of support, but by the candidate who has most sovereigns in his purse. Con- sequently, when it turns out that bribery has been practised on behalf of a Member, the reason for retaining him in Par- liament vanishes. It is no longer known whom he represents. It may be a majoiity of the effective voters, or it may not ; consequently, he has to be unseated, quite apart from any question as to his own participation in the bribery. He may be as innocent as possible on this head, but he has ceased to possess one essential qualification of a Member. He no• longer represents anything that it is desirable to have repre- sented.
At the same time, the hardship to an innocent Member i4 very great. It is great for Mr. Dodson, for whom a seat will be found, but it is greater still for the many unseated Members for whom no seats will be found. No matter how resolute they may have been not to find money for bribery, some too eager partisans have found it for them, and the mischief is done. The Chester election reveals a new and worse form of this danger. It was bad enough when a candidate had only to trouble him- self about the acts of agents and canvassers whom he might,. to some extent, choose himself. But the growth of Political Associations has made things ten times worse. A man is invited by a local political Association to stand for a con- stituency, and from the moment that ho accepts ho has no voice in the conduct of his own election. He declares that ho will not be a party to this, that he will not consent to that, and the leaders of the Association give a civil assent, and nothing more. How can the candidate control an organisation about which he knows nothing, except that the Chairman is Mr. So-and-So, and that he is told that it can make his re- turn certain. He has no means of knowing what steps the Association has taken to make it certain. He can so far pro- tect himself as to put himself beyond suspicion of any personal responsibility for what is going on, but as to pre- venting what is going on, he cannot prevent what lie does not know, and the Association takes very good care that as regards bribery he shall know nothing whatever. The dilemma before the candidate, therefore, is this,—either to decline the services of the Association, and certainly lose the election ; or to accept those services, and possibly lose the seat after lie has won the election. Of course, between these alternatives he chooses the latter, but if it turns out badly, he naturally feels that the law has been hard on him. At present, we see no way out of the difficulty. Political Associations cannot be put down by Act of Parliament, and there will always be a danger that when party passions run high, they will wish to make the return of their candidate as secure as money can make it. The only remedy we can suggest is a strict administration of the law, in the hope that in proportion as it is recognised that detected bribery infallibly defeats its own object, Political Associations may become more chary of resorting to it. The one thing that would certainly make matters worse is any relaxation of the law. The only way of saving a candidate from his friends, is to convince his friends that by helping him in this particular way they will hurt themselves, as well as him.
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