RAILWAY INFLUENCE ON ELECTIONS.
IT is of course very proper that the Duke of Marlborough should be held up to public rebuke for his treatment of Woodstock. Ile is breaking the law which forbids a peer to interfere in an election, and if the people of Woodstock may be trusted, he is breaking it in the very worst way. When the local magnate simply selects out of many candidates acceptable to the constituency the one most acceptable to him- self he may be guilty of an undue stretch of power, but he does not at all events nullify the representative system. His nominee votes as the electors wish him to vote, and their principles therefore are represented, though their inclinations are overruled. At Woodstock, however, the people declare that they are not represented at all, that they not only cannot secure the member they want, but are compelled to resist the party which they prefer, the town in fact throwing its weight in the House on the side which the town abhors. Never- theless, bad as this case may be, there is another form of " influence " growing up among us which is at least as dangerous as that of the great proprietors. A peer, whatever his rank or possessions, is still only an indi- vidual, and as such amenable to opinion or to ridicule, or even if he becomes too intolerable to the suasion of rotten eggs. A railway board unfortunately is exposed to none of these things, is as impervious to opinion, or laughter, or any softer missiles of an election fight, as one of its own locomotives, and railway boards interfere very decidedly in elections. A railway chairman, if a politician and tolerably popular with his shareholders, has more influence than any great peer, possesses more patronage, controls directly more votes, can offer very much higher inducements to entire constituencies. He has frequently thousands of dependents all possessed of votes, can give contracts the distribution of which affects the prosperity of entire boroughs, can make arrangements with local lines which benefit or annoy a whole country-side, can, above all, offer means of locomotion such as may double or treble the income of a half-agricultural constituency. The great peer seldom rules in more than one or two places, but the chairman, say of the Great Eastern' can exercise a dis- tinct and appreciable influence in at least twenty. It is not of course a commanding influence in the sense in which the influence of Blenheim is commanding at Woodstock, but it is strong enough very often to hold the balance of power, to make resistance to a chairman or chair- man's nominee very dangerous work indeed, and to give the company very considerable power over party resolves. More- over, the influence, such as it is, can be exercised very un- scrupulously, first, because a board is almost irresponsible, each member accepting only a minute share of blame, and secondly, because it can allege a reason for its oppression which is not altogether selfish. Employes may reasonably be asked to consider the interests of the great corporation which pays them, and the voter is told that "the company needs strength in the House." A peer when instructing his tenantry is obliged to make some of them vote knowingly against their convictions, but the man who votes for his company can very comfortably sink them and allege that he is simply performing a professional duty. He wants his company to be well heard, and it cannot be well heard unless it has plenty of active or manageable representatives in Parliament. Nothiu is so dangerous as a power which at once intimidates you hap voting against your conscience, and offers you a salve for the wound which will heal it in the eyes of your neighbours, and sometimes in your own. Again, the great peer is almost sure to be governed the first instance by his pocal convietions,—hisiudguaent as to the measures required by the common weal. He may soma be selfish, striving for a garter or the strawberry leaves, t he expects to earn these things not by a bargain with op onents, but by the consistent support of those who represent his own views. But a company is sure to be guided in the first instance by its interests, to be anxious about its metropolitan station, or its running powers, or its right of competition, or its authority to issue debentures, and to exert its influence with an eye to those results rather than to consequences more interesting to the people at large. We do not mean that influence would be bartered for concessions, or votes exchanged for private Acts of Parliament, but we do mean that it is very annoying, for example, to a Tory Minister to be compelled to resist plans for slicing the metro- polis into blocks, when those plans are ardently favoured by companies which can affect thirty or forty otherwise safe seats. The citizens aggrieved usually find that it is much more useful to appeal to the Lords, who need not be anxious whether they irritate voters, than to attempt to move the compact body of well-primed members, who sweep railway bills through the Commons with such pertinacious energy. We have pointed to the Great Eastern as our illustration, but suppose the Great Northern to have had no votes in the House, to have stood in the position say of the Russian trade, is it equally probable that a bill for making coal three shillings a ton cheaper in Eastern London would have been rejected ? The great railways, like the great families, are happily divided in views, but were • they united, the nation might find itself subjected to a tyranny to which that of the great families was a joke. They could at all events be coerced, but a board has not even a throat.
But what we shall be asked is the remedy. Nothing pre- vents a board from interfering in elections, and if the prac- tice were forbidden by law they would interfere as before, just as the Peers now do. Directors cannot be disqualified only because they are directors, and the influence of capital and patronage will make itself felt whatever the system of election. We reply that the remedy rests with those who are most seriously injured by the existing practice—the great body of shareholders. One-half of them are pretty certain on any line to entertain political views differing from those of the railway, purchasers asking for coupons without re- ference to their political colour. The money and power of this half are used habitually to resist their most cherished ideas of politics, and their property made the instrument of opposing their own ideas. To take an extreme illustration, every Nonconformist shareholder in the Great Eastern actually subscribes to keep up the tests which exclude him from Oxford and Cambridge. The shareholders can control the directors, though public opinion cannot, and every company should insist on its governing board issuing a notice such as that just put out by the North-Eastern line, and adhering in spirit as well as letter to its provisions.
This source of corruption removed, another might well be attacked. It seems not a little doubtful whether the time may not have arrived to reconsider the provisions for maintaining order during the days of election. Scenes like those which have occurred this week at Nottingham, or which followed the election of Mr. Lowe for Kidderminster, or which may possibly occur if anybody opposes the popular favourite at Dudley, are not merely a disgrace to our civilization. They interfere with freedom of election just as much as the influence of great Peers or the authority of greater railway boards. Men can be found no doubt easily enough to whom the chance of a broken head is an additional incentive to stand, but then they have an object to gain, and the ordinary voter has not. Nothing deters the rich, and the timid, and the refined, and the sickly, and the retiring from voting so much as the chance of mob outrage, and seats are constantly lost, particularly by Conservatives, because those classes can- not be tempted to undergo the annoyance of fighting their way to the poll. The best way of preventing this would be to alter the mode of taking votes, having them, for instance, collected like the census-papers, but if that innovation is re- jected, public order might at least be maintained. That men like Messrs. Morley and Paget should not be able to enter Nottingham, because a parcel of ruffianly non-electors choose to think their candidature injurious to their favourite member, is a disgrace not only to Nottingham, but to the organization of the British Government. In America, which is supposed to be under mob law, an election involving the very existence of the nation is carried through without a wound given or received, while in aristocratic England a trumpery squabble about the personal merit of candidates may cost a dozen lives.
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