We have said enough elsewhere about the Election Commis- sions,
but must here make one apology. We last week overrated the honesty of rascals. We said that ander the Ballot men capable- . of taking bribes seemed, nevertheless, to be incapable of cheating their employers. There are, it is evident, large exceptions to that role. At -Sandwich, for example, there appears to be no morality, either cynical or other, among bribees. The regular rale appears to have been to take a bribe from the Conserva- tives and another from the Liberals, and then either vote for the Conservatives, or for neither party,—a very healthy lesson for our Liberal friends. There is another lesson to be learned by candidates from several of these elections. Bribing agents cannot be trusted. We do not remember in any previous series of inquiries to have noticed so many cases in which bribers acknowledged that they kept back money given them to bribe with. We had hitherto thought that stealing pence out of a blind man's tray while feeding his dog, was the meanest form of criminality known, but we did not sufficiently understand the capacities of sub-agents in a hot election where money is going. They are capable of bribing the blind man to perjure himself with false coin, and pocketing the real sovereigns. Even the Commissioners, who are pretty thick-skinned, seem astonished.
Previous page
